The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has approved a Chinese investor’s application to set up an enterprise called “Taiwan Yonghe King” (台灣永和大王) in Taiwan to sell food, beverages and groceries, the ministry announced on Tuesday.
The Chinese investor will invest NT$5 million (US$163,860) in the business, ministry officials said.
The investment plan has stirred controversy because of the company’s proposed name and speculation that the company backing it was a soybean milk-chain in Shanghai called Shanghai Yonghe King Co (上海永和大王).
Dismissing the rumors, ministry officials said the investor was not involved with the Shanghai company.
Traditional
Soybean milk is a traditional breakfast beverage in Taiwan that often goes with flat sesame seed bread stuffed with a fried dough stick.
Yonghe (永和), Taipei County, is one of the best-known places for breakfast food, and its popularity has made “Yonghe” soybean milk representative of Taiwanese soybean milk.
Use of the name could be seen as conflicting with existing breakfast and late-night snack chains in Taiwan, but ministry officials said that companies are allowed to register any name in Taiwan as long as it is unique.
However, they acknowledged that if a company wanted to register the name “Taiwan Yonghe King” as a trademark in Taiwan, the move would very likely be rejected because there would be too little differentiation between it and other existing trademarks, such as “Yonghe Soybean Milk” and “Yonghe Soybean Milk King.”
No store yet
It was still unclear yesterday whether the newly approved company intended to set up a soybean milk store.
During Tuesday’s investment review meeting at the ministry, 24 investment projects were approved, including 10 investment plans proposed by overseas Chinese and foreign nationals and eight by Chinese investors.
Investments in China proposed by one overseas investor and five Taiwanese companies were also approved.
One surprise was that the high-profile plan of panel maker AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電) to invest in a 7.5-generation panel factory in China was not put on the meeting’s agenda.
Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Hwang Jung-chiou (黃重球) said the authorities involved were still reviewing AUO’s application.
AUO is one of the world’s major manufacturers of large-sized TFT-LCD panels.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS