The PRC and Taiwan are standing on the threshold of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Despite the current economic downturn, post-WTO prospects for US commercial partnerships with Taiwan firms are looking more attractive, especially with regard to opportunities in the Greater China market.
Taiwan has long served as a base for Greater China operations for a cross-section of leading US firms in the semiconductor, aerospace/defense, financial services, and other sectors. However, the scope and reach of those operations has been constrained by still incomplete links of communications and transport (both passenger and freight) across the Taiwan. Accession to the WTO, together with progress on the so-called Three Links, will enhance Taiwan's viability as a Greater China operations center and regional partner for US firms.
Business always seeks to produce goods in the lowest cost environment, to sell goods where profits can be maximized, and to base operations where the "hard" and "soft" infrastructure for doing business are most secure and attractive. US firms have been increasingly attracted in recent years by the low costs in the PRC, both for skilled and semi-skilled labor and for facilities construction and operations.
Likewise, the PRC market of nearly 1.3 billion consumers offers attractive prospects for long-term profit growth. While the "hard" infrastructure is improving in the PRC, Taiwan offers US firms a considerably more advanced infrastructure of transport, telecommunications, energy and environmental protection.
Even more important, Taiwan's "soft" infrastructure of legal protections, financial regulations, procedural transparency, and a globally-tested workforce is good and getting better.
It is the positive interplay of constantly improving "hard" and "soft" infrastructures -- driven by dynamics of privatization, liberalization, and democratization -- that attracts the attention of US business decision-makers. This positive interplay makes Taiwan interesting to US firms as a potential partner, and base, for Greater China operations.
The scale of this partnership opportunity is particularly vivid in the IT sector. The value of this sector in Greater China in 2000 exceeded US$48 billion. Approximately, US$25 billion of that amount was produced in China, whereas almost US$24 billion was produced in Taiwan.
Tellingly, however, 70 percent of the production in the PRC was generated by Taiwan firms with operations in mainland China. Add to this the skills of the more than 300,000 Taiwan production managers and other businesspeople active in the mainland market and the logic for US-Taiwan partnership in Greater China becomes clear.
To examine and assess these opportunities, the Commercial Section of AIT organized, on March 23, 2001, the "Taiwan/Greater China IT Matchmaker Forum" at the Marshall School of Business on the campus of the University of Southern California. The goal of this three-hour session was to examine business models of some leading US and Taiwan firms who are already leveraging IT partnerships and using Taiwan as a springboard to the Greater China market. The audience was made up of small and medium-sized US firms standing to benefit by following a similar strategy.
The companies presenting their business models at this session included Nortel, Lam Research, Proctor & Gamble, IBM, Acer, Taiwan Fixed Network (Pacific Group), Sina.com, and TSMC's WaferTec subsidiary.
AIT is currently working to edit and post highlights from this session in the form of a webcast available free of charge via internet on the US Department of Commerce's www.usatrade.gov website.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique