Taiwan's economy will not become a bubble economy if the government's policies and programs are allowed to remain in place, Premier Yu Shyi-kun said yesterday.
Yu made the remarks while giving a speech at an award ceremony in eastern Ilan County recognizing outstanding businesspeople.
Yu said that the economy began to regain momentum in the second half of this year.
He claimed that it would not turn into a bubble economy, owing to the successful transformation of Taiwan's industries and an ongoing economic recovery, evidenced by the many foreign investors seeking to take advantage of the Taiwanese market.
Except for the first quarter, in which economic growth dropped slightly because of the outbreak of SARS, Yu said he was confident that growth for the whole of the year would reach as high as 3 percent.
In the face of strong competition from China, the premier said, Taiwan must maintain its advantage based on research and development (R&D) and innovation to counter the Chinese threat.
Since the launch of "Challenge 2008," the government's six-year national development plan, more than 100 R&D centers have been established in Taiwan, which Yu said had exceeded the target set by the government.
In addition, Yu spoke of the government's "two trillion, two star" program as a source for further economic growth.
The program promotes both the semiconductor and biotechnology industries.
Yu said that the program, together with plans to double the number of tourist arrivals and other plans to enhance promotion of the digital content sector, would provide further impetus to an already strongly-performing economy.
Yu said he strongly believed that an overall economic recovery will be well in place by the end of this year.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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