President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) marked the third anniversary of her inauguration with a news conference highlighting the achievement of her administration in the areas of defense, space technology, pension reform and soft power.
She promised that if re-elected, the government would host a “Taiwan Expo” to highlight the nation’s development of its “soft power” over the past few decades to the world.
“‘MIT’ or ‘Made in Taiwan’ has become a popular search term on the Internet again because of the trade confrontations between the US and China … but we need to create an ‘MIT Upgrade’ — a new economic model for better production processes that incorporates artificial intelligence, green energy and other advanced technologies,” Tsai said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
“Therefore, I hope that there will be a ‘Taiwan Expo’ in my second term, so that our friends around the world can see the nation’s comprehensive power,” she said.
The Executive Yuan on Thursday released draft amendments to the Foreign Trade Act (貿易法) aimed at preventing companies from shipping China-made products to Taiwan to receive a “Made in Taiwan” (MIT) certificate of origin.
Tsai yesterday said that her administration sets long-term policy goals and the country would start harvesting the results of these policies in her fourth year in office.
She said that she in the past three years has been under a lot of pressure and became the focus of grudges over the pension reforms for civil servants, teachers and military personnel as well as the Forward-Looking Infrastructure Development Program.
However, the reforms will ensure the pension system will remain financially viable for at least another 30 years, and the infrastructure project has greatly expanded the nation’s domestic demand and supported its economic growth, she said.
Under her administration, the nation has been able to make great strides in developing indigenous defense submarines and space technology, Tsai said.
Her administration has repaired mistakes made by its Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) predecessor, which depended solely on China for economic growth, she said.
How could Taiwan survive a trade confrontation between the US and China if it continued to use the KMT’s strategy, she asked.
“We have helped the country change its economic constitution, and now we are about to see an ‘explosive growth’ in investment in the country,” she said.
Tsai dodged queries about her bid and that of former premier William Lai (賴清德) for the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential primary and whether passage of the Enforcement Act of Judicial Yuan Constitutional Interpretation No. 748 (司法院釋字第748號解釋施行法) on marriage equality could affect her chances of re-election.
She said the act was something her administration had to do.
Additional reporting by Jonathon Chin
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