The Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday that Kinmen Government plans to set up a trade park to take advantage of cheap labor from China's Xiamen City is a complicated issue that will not be easily realized in the short term.
"It is a complex issue. Importing Chinese laborers should be approved by the legislature -- it is not so simple," said Fu Don-cheng (
Kinmen County's Commissioner Lee Chu-feng (李炷烽) said on Monday that the county had decided to set a trade park for the processing industry and run the business by importing cheap laborers from Xiamen -- only 2km away from Kinmen -- to combine with advanced Taiwan management systems and stable investment environment.
According to Lee, the salary for Chinese laborers from Xiamen only costs employers about NT$2,000 per month and the workers only take 20 minutes to come to Kinmen via the small three links' regular ferry service currently operated between Kinmen and Xiamen.
Since the combination of Chinese laborers and Taiwanese management might lower overheads involved in the processing industry, the commissioner claimed that such plans have drawn attention from many domestic and foreign companies.
However, Fu told the Taipei Times yesterday that such an idea oversimplified the issue, since policy regarding the importing of Chinese laborers remained undecided by central government.
"According to current cross-strait regulations, a decision to import Chinese laborers has to get approval from the Legislative Yuan. There are still a lot of difficulties to overcome to realize the park," Fu said.
The plan is still under discussion in a cross-ministry meeting and has not been approved by central government yet.
A source from the Ministry of Economic Affairs told the Taipei Times that the ministry welcomes the plan as far as it helps boost Kinmen's economy.
"For domestic companies that plan to move to China hoping to benefit from cheap Chinese laborers, setting up plants in Kinmen might be an alternative," the source said.
According to the source, since the investment environment is still unstable in China, using Kinmen as a base to combine cheap labor with stable Taiwanese management systems would make the processing industry park more competitive.
The plan showed that the local Kinmen government is eager to boost its economy through various means but the central government's overall national policy is not necessarily in line with local interests.
MAC Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) once said that the council fully understood the needs of Kinmen to boost the island's economy via the three small links, but she said that if overall national policy is taken into account, local interests might not be the priority.
"A balance between central government and local government is needed," Tsai said.
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