Taiwan’s government is planning to allow Chinese investors to invest in 161 types of businesses in a third wave of opening the country’s markets to Chinese investment, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Speaking at a legislative committee hearing, Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) said the ministry’s proposal would allow Chinese investors to invest in 115 types of manufacturing businesses, 23 service businesses and 23 public infrastructure construction businesses.
This would allow Chinese capital to be invested in 97 percent of the business categories in Taiwan’s manufacturing sector, 51 percent of the service sector and 51 percent of the public infrastructure construction industry, Shih said.
According to the ministry, 42 percent of the business categories in both Taiwan’s manufacturing and service sectors are currently open to Chinese investment.
About 24 percent of businesses in the public infrastructure construction industry are open to Chinese capital following two rounds of liberalization in 2009 and last year, the ministry added.
In key manufacturing sectors, including flat panels, semiconductors, LEDs and solar batteries, Chinese investors are not allowed to control the management or become major stakeholders, Shih said.
Any investment plans involving Chinese investors in these key sectors, he said, will need to be examined by a task force to protect Taiwan’s key technologies.
“Regulations have become stricter, not looser, and potential investors are required to submit their strategies for industrial cooperation,” Shih added.
In the previous two waves of market opening, Taiwan allowed Chinese investment in 247 businesses in the manufacturing, service and public infrastructure sectors.
Taiwan has attracted US$272 million of Chinese investment since June 2009, when the market-opening process began, according to the ministry.
As of December last year, Taiwanese companies with Chinese capital had hired 5,189 local workers, the ministry said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured