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.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
SK Hynix Inc warned of increased volatility in the second half of this year despite resilient demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips from big tech providers, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs. The company reported a better-than-projected 158 percent jump in March-quarter operating income, propelled in part by stockpiling ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. SK Hynix stuck with a forecast for a doubling in demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) essential to Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, which in turn drive giant data centers built by the likes of Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc. That SK Hynix is maintaining its
RSS