Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) on Saturday called on the government to speed up efforts to sign a trade-in-goods agreement with China to lift the nation’s lagging economic competitiveness.
Speaking in an interview with CtiTV (中天新聞台), Gou said that the conclusion of free-trade talks between South Korea and China last week was a “warning sign” to Taiwan and will be a factor influencing the investment decisions of foreign companies.
Foreign companies will base their decisions to invest in Taiwan on whether such a move could help them access the Chinese market and if Taiwan can become an important base of operations in the Asia-Pacific and Greater China regions, Gou said.
With Taiwan’s global competitiveness waning, Guo said he would not invest in Taiwan “if I were a foreign investor.”
Taiwan cannot abandon the Chinese market, which is likely to become the world’s largest within the next two to three years, he said.
Taiwan enjoys an inherent advantage in accessing the Chinese market because of language and cultural ties, but this advantage is being eroded by decreasing mutual trust, partisan confrontation, politicization of economic issues and a weak government that is “overly accommodating to minority opinions,” he said.
Hon Hai may have to reduce its investment in Taiwan if the nation continues to look at trade liberalization issues through a political lens and refuses to change its attitude toward China, Gou said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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