China is pressing for a vast Asia-Pacific free-trade agreement, a senior official said yesterday, as a rival US-led deal that excludes the Asian giant has yet to reach agreement.
Chinese Assistant Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen (王受文) told reporters at a briefing that China has proposed setting up a working group to study the feasibility of an Asia-Pacific Free Trade Agreement (FTAAP).
The proposal comes ahead of a meeting later this month of trade ministers from the APEC forum, which China will host.
“The feasibility study will look into the potential economic benefits if APEC members reach a free-trade agreement, how to make use of existing FTAs... and whether we can use the similar aspects of the various FTAs to serve the general FTA within the Asia-Pacific region,” Wang said. “We think there will be no conflict between the FTAAP and the region’s other FTAs under discussion.”
The US has been trying to secure agreement on a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a grouping of 12 nations including Japan, Australia, Malaysia and Mexico. All belong to APEC, but the US-led trade talks have become hung up on issues related to Japan’s tightly guarded auto and agricultural sectors.
There had been hopes that Tokyo and Washington might break an impasse in the stalled talks during US President Barack Obama’s visit to Japan last week, but they failed to clinch a deal and negotiations continue.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in October last year said at the APEC business forum in Indonesia that his country would “commit itself to building a trans-Pacific regional cooperation framework that benefits all parties.”
The comments were interpreted by Chinese media as criticism of the TPP — a key part of Obama’s economic and strategic policy.
The composition of the working group is yet to be decided, but will possibly comprise government officials, business people and academics from different countries, Wang said.
It will come up with suggestions on whether the FTAAP is desired and whether negotiations should start, he said.
The proposal “has won positive reactions from some APEC member countries,” he added, though he did not identify them.
POTENTIAL SETBACK: Although Chinese chip designers and foundry firms already have US EDA software, they might be unable to update those programs under new US rules The US’ latest ban on advanced electronic design automation (EDA) software exports to China might hinder Chinese chip companies from accessing advanced semiconductor technology, as they attempt to upgrade to 3-nanometer processes in the next three to five years, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. The US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security on Friday announced bans on EDA tools for gate-all-around field-effect transistors (GAAFET), a new-generation semiconductor technology that US chipmaker Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co from South Korea are adopting to make 4-nanometer and 3-nanometer chips. The bureau in a statement said that gate-all-around field-effect transistor
WIDENING THE FIELD: Human resources managers must drop prejudices regarding gender, appearance and age to find the best candidates, Micro Technology said The job market for Taiwan’s semiconductor industry remained tight this quarter, as hiring activity slowed from a record high last quarter, a survey released yesterday by online human resource firm 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) showed. Ongoing labor shortages have prompted local semiconductor firms to recruit more women and foreigners in Taiwan and in Southeast Asia, the job bank said. The talent gap in the first quarter reached 35,000 people per month, a surge of 39.8 percent from the same period last year, as the contactless economy and digital transformation shore up demand for semiconductors, 104 Job Bank said in its annual report
DISMAL OUTLOOK: A Citigroup analyst predicted firms face ‘the worst semiconductor downturn in at least a decade,’ due to inventory build and the potential of a recession Semiconductor stocks tumbled after Micron Technology Inc became the latest chipmaker to warn about slowing demand, triggering concern that the industry is heading into a painful downturn. In the US on Tuesday, the Philadelphia semiconductor index sank 4.6 percent, with all 30 members in the red, its biggest drop in about two months. In Asia, chip stocks from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to Samsung Electronics Co, SK Hynix Inc and Tokyo Electron Ltd slumped. Investors are growing increasingly skittish as the notoriously cyclical industry is hurtling toward a prolonged slump after years of widespread shortages that led to heavy
POSITIVE CULTURE: Pursuing 12-inch wafers earlier than peers helped TSMC lead the industry, said a former executive, whose main regret was working for SMIC in China Corporate culture at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is what made the chipmaker a leading player in the global industry, a former executive said in an interview with California’s Computer History Museum. “One of the really important reasons that TSMC succeeded” is the culture at the firm, where “if equipment went down at two o’clock in the morning, we just called an equipment engineer,” and the worker would not complain, said former TSMC joint chief operating officer Chiang Shan-yi (蔣尚義). “We didn’t really do anything special, anything great, but we didn’t make any major mistakes,” when compared with competitors, such
RSS