According to Taiwanese financial expert Hsieh Chin-ho (
However, it was exactly during those times -- when then president Lee Teng-hui (
With severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) wreaking havoc across China, Beijing's habit of covering up reality is finally evident to the entire global community. International pressure has forced Beijing to announce daily updates of its SARS figures. The Chinese Communist Party leaders have contributed to more than 500 deaths around the world, and tens of thousands of people being quarantined. And the epidemic continues to spread. The impact on Taiwan is also yet to peak.
On the one hand, the economic losses incurred by SARS are so large that it is difficult to estimate. International airlines and tourism businesses are bearing the brunt of it. The gravity of this impact may even exceed that of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the US. No matter how the SARS tempest ends, it will surely be a serious loss of face for China in the international community.
The epidemic will inevitably damage the credibility of the Chinese Communist Party in the eyes of the Chinese people. It is hard to predict how strong the public resentment will be, but such factors will seriously erode the foundations of communist rule in China and create political instability. Beijing's credibility is bankrupt both at home and abroad, its reputation on a nose dive.
Many Taiwanese businessespeople, who have put all their eggs in the China basket in recent years, should now be wondering how long their businesses will last? Given that the lives of Taiwanese businesspeople in China are in danger and their business future is in jeopardy, we believe now is the time to attract them back home.
At such a crucial juncture, the government should quickly face up to the factors that caused those businesses to leave in the first place -- an unreasonable taxation system, for example, including inheritance taxes that can amount to more than 50 percent.
The government should also demonstrate efficient administration and create a better investment environment. For example, it should formulate a set of policies to actively help returning businesses find land for their factories, upgrade their technologies and increase their competitiveness. This may help change the nation's economic prospects after the SARS outbreak is over.
The key is in whether the government can demonstrate the drive and determination needed to create new prospects for the country.
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past