The government will establish a "financial supervisory board" on July 1. The Cabinet has already appointed Taiwan Sugar Chairman Kong Jaw-sheng (
Authority over financial management, supervision, inspection and punishment have always belonged to different government agencies -- such as the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank of China and the Central Deposit Insurance Corporation. This has led to repeated calls for these functions to be brought together under a single supervisory authority. When the Democratic Progressive Party took office, the government finally decided to establish a financial supervisory board with the status of a commission directly under the Cabinet. The new agency will integrate the finance ministry's Bureau of Monetary Affairs, Department of Insurance and Securities and Futures Commission, the central bank's Department of Financial Inspection and the Central Deposit Insurance Corporation's inspection division.
The success of the board lies in its ability to coordinate with these agencies. Although the central bank's Department of Financial Inspection will be incorporated into the board's functions, the bank insists on retaining its rights to supervise and discipline currency issuance and foreign exchange management. Finance inspection continues to be the province of more than one agency and originally the creation of the board was intended to simplify operations by taking care of the big picture and leaving the details to others. Because its functions are still conducted by other agencies, this might lead to an even more cumbersome financial inspection bureaucracy in which disciplinary authority is separated between many agencies.
The supervisory board will have four bureaus, for banking, securities and futures, insurance and inspection. This division replicates the Ministry of Finance's Bureau of Monetary Affairs, the Department of Insurance, the Securities and Futures Commission and the central bank's Bank Examination Department within the structure of the board. Yet modern financial products span a variety of financial sectors. A single financial product might involve exchange rates, tax rates, interest rates and insurance rates and is difficult to categorize in conventional terms. If the board still demarcates its organization according to sector rather than function, it will have difficulty responding efficiently and effectively. This underlines the importance of internal integration to the financial supervisory board's success.
As regards the composition of the board, member quotas will be assigned to all political parties to prevent it from falling under the control or working for the financial profit of any particular party. At the same time, government-instituted watchdogs often serve to blur responsibility or simply avoid offending anybody, so that they have great difficulty in actually preventing corruption.
Hopefully the supervisory board will help to work toward creating an international and multifaceted financial market. Its point of departure should be new ways of thinking. In more practical terms it also needs to integrate functions that were previously the domain of various government departments, so that they can become an organic whole, establishing a structure based on the nature and function of various financial instruments. It also needs to maintain close relations with the Ministry of Finance and the central bank. Only in this way can the financial supervisory board perform the functions expected of it -- promoting financial reforms and maintaining the security of Taiwan's financial markets.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations