China on Thursday promised to speed up imports of pharmaceuticals and medical devices from the US and enforce its anti-monopoly laws equally among Chinese and foreign companies.
Those commitments were announced at an annual trade meeting between the two countries that took place in Chicago.
Chinese Assistant Minister of Commerce Zhang Xiangchen (張向晨) told reporters that China would work to streamline the review and approval process for US products in the pharmaceutical and medical industries and address a backlog within two or three years.
“We will also reduce as much as possible needless clinical trials,” he said through an interpreter.
Topics at this year’s US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade also included protection of intellectual property and trade secrets, as well as ensuring there’s a level playing field for US companies in China.
The yearly gatherings are meant to resolve disputes before they disrupt trade.
The US side was led by US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and US Trade Representative Michael Froman.
Pritzker said China’s promises in the medical and pharmaceutical areas “should lead to [an] increase in US exports and US jobs in these two important sectors.”
She also called Chinese movement on antitrust laws “significant.”
Business groups have expressed concern about a wave of Chinese anti-monopoly investigations, suggesting Beijing is improperly using those probes to pressure foreign companies to cut prices or change business practices.
Mentioning one specific step, Zhang said China would try, when possible, to allow US legal counsel for US companies to attend meetings in antitrust proceedings.
Despite such pledges at the yearly gatherings, US companies have complained of slow progress and are pushing for faster strides toward an investment treaty between the two countries. A treaty would help make operating conditions in China’s state-dominated economy clearer and more predictable, they say.
Pritzker said that “none of this is to say that we got all the outcomes we wanted or that all the outcomes are perfect.”
Trade between the two countries totaled US$617 billion last year, and US firms have rushed to invest in China, but foreign business groups argue that China improperly uses industrial standards and other regulation to shield its own companies from competition.
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
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by