Academics yesterday urged caution toward Beijing’s relaxation of restrictions on Taiwan-based businesses, citing political and business risks, as well as its potential to drain Taiwan’s capital and talent.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) on Wednesday announced that many restrictions on the licensing of privately or individually owned Taiwanese businesses are to be lifted next year.
Previously, Chinese authorities only permitted Taiwanese-owned businesses from the retail and restaurant industries to operate in China, but the new rules are to permit privately owned businesses from 24 different industries, including advertising and packaging services, the TAO said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The area in which Taiwanese businesses are allowed to operate will be drastically expanded from nine provinces and cities to almost all of China, excluding Xinjiang, Gansu and Qinghai provinces, as well as Inner Mongolia and Tibet, the TAO said, adding that Taiwanese businesses would also no longer be limited to having a maximum of 10 employees and 500m2 of business space.
National Cheng Kung University law professor Hsu Chun-hsin (許忠信), who is a former legislator of the Taiwan Solidarity Union, said the lifting of restrictions is a Chinese strategy to drain Taiwan’s small and medium businesses of capital and talent.
The policy is also an alternative to the trade in service and goods agreements, whose future had been called into question by the public backlash against it, Hsu said.
“While many will be tempted to start businesses in China, my experience as a lawmaker made me familiar with many cases of Taiwanese entrepreneurs who were blindsided by hostile takeovers and lost everything,” he said. “Private operators are no doubt even less protected than their predecessors.”
National Central University economics professor Chiou Jiunn-rong (邱俊榮) was also reserved about the announcement, saying: “The yielding of benefits is only superficial.”
Only the most well-connected Taiwanese corporations could gain direct access to customers in China, and those customers consist almost entirely of major Chinese corporations, he said, adding that the announcement is “an attempt to influence the coming election.”
Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) warned that the lifting of restrictions is a reaction to the stonewalling of the trade in service and goods agreements by the legislature, designed to drain Taiwan’s talent and capital while increasing dependence.
It is also possible that China intends to utilize Taiwanese capital and talent for its own “One Belt, One Road” project, Lai said.
“China is a highly volatile investment environment due to its justice system, tax codes and investment management practices,” he said, adding that Taiwanese business owners frequently lose their enterprises, or even their freedom, in China.
“The promotion of the market is the cause of Taiwan’s current economic woes … the government should take measures to prevent more of Taiwan’s technological advantages from falling into Chinese hands,” Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) said.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
RSS