A call by Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) for cooperation between domestic small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their Chinese counterparts is well-intended, but businesspeople should proceed only on condition Taiwanese businesses are protected, business leaders said yesterday.
“China must show its commitment to facilitating a mechanism to protect the rights of Taiwanese companies doing business there before smoothing out hurdles for possible cross-strait business cooperation,” Paul Wang (王振保), secretary-general of the National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (中小企業協會), said by telephone.
“We often hear of Taiwanese investors falling victim to Chinese partners, who pillage the Taiwanese-funded companies,” he said.
Wang nevertheless threw his support behind Chen’s call for both sides to cooperate to expand export markets, saying that Chinese businesses shouldn’t necessarily be viewed as competitors.
“If the partnership turns out to benefit and make money for both sides, why not?” he asked.
During his trip to Taiwan, Chen on Wednesday urged Taiwanese SMEs to complement their business strength with that of their privately owned peers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces before tapping into the world market.
He encouraged Taiwanese SMEs in the traditional industries to explore business opportunities from China’s stimulus measures to spur domestic consumption, including the building of infrastructure, subsidies to the automobile sector and purchases of home appliances in rural provinces, as well as the transfer to energy-saving products such as high-tech light-emitting diode (LED) lighting products.
Tony Cheng (鄭榮文), honorary chairman of the Taiwan Merchant Association in Shenzhen, said yesterday that few of his association’s up to 4,000 SMEs were inclined to partner with Chinese businessmen.
“Like tying the knot in a marriage, it’s always hard to find the right [business] partner here in China who shares your business strategies, philosophy and integrity,” Cheng said by telephone.
He nevertheless said that he didn’t rule out the possibility that Taiwanese businesses, which have an edge in research and development, quality control and management skills, can locate suitable Chinese partners to take advantage of their locally well-known brands and their knowledge about the Chinese market to create synergies for both sides.
“It takes time to find a perfect partner and get familiar with it before initiating any cooperation,” he said, adding that any cooperation should not be hurried.
Secretary-general of the Taiwan Chain Stores and Franchise Association (連鎖加盟促進協會) Beryl Lee (李培芬) said Taiwanese businesses have to be flexible with their Chinese partners.
Taiwanese chain stores and franchises often need to leverage capital and talent in China when they attempt to branch into the market, she said.
Franchising models in Taiwan do not often apply in China, she said.
For example, a Taiwanese children’s wear chain has had a hard time asking its Chinese franchisees to keep up with its benchmark standards in service quality and store cleanness, she said.
“The Taiwanese owner had to take his Chinese franchisees to a five-star hotel to make them understand the level of store cleanness he was looking for,” she said.
So, interim administrators are often established in China to help manage the Chinese chains until they meet standards, something unnecessary in Taiwan, Lee said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS