In a strongly worded comment, National Development Council (NDC) Minister Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) told a radio station yesterday that there is no such thing as the Four Asian Tigers anymore because Taiwan can no longer generate the sort of growth that earned it a place in the exclusive club.
Speaking on Taipei-based UFO Radio, the country’s chief economic policy planner said that excessive restrictions and a bent toward protectionism are keeping Taiwan’s economy behind its three former counterparts, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea.
“When the economy shot up rapidly in the 1980s, there was no [government] intervention, and people had a lot of creativity in doing business, but when the economy matured, all sorts of rules were put in place,” Kuan said, attributing the sluggish economy to strict controls.
These include environmental regulations, Kuan said, citing Taiwan’s decision to cancel the construction of a major petrochemical plant in 2011, calling the incident a case of economic development yielding to environmentalism.
A petrochemical industrial chain could generate revenues of more than NT$1 trillion (US$33 billion), he said, adding that even a small country like Singapore has a petrochemical industry. He praised the city-state’s high environmental standards and quick, transparent approval process.
Kuan said that it does not make sense any more to look at Taiwan in the context of the Asian Tigers, as Singapore’s per capita income is now double that of Taiwan, South Korea has grown to be one of the G20 major economies and Hong Kong is flying high on the back of China.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day