Taiwan needs to take time to develop the necessary conditions to establish itself as a financial hub in this part of Asia, visiting Mayor of the City of London Lord Alderman Robert Finch said yesterday.
Finch is also the head of the Corporation of London, which provides local government services for the City of London.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
"I am interested in coming here to see what are the conditions you need to establish to make this city a hub for the financial services industry ? 20 percent of your GDP stems from your financial services industry," Finch, who was visiting Taipei for the second time, told reporters in an interview.
The Lord Mayor, whose main role is to promote the City of London as the world's leading international financial and business center, said one of the purposes of his trip here is to see whether Taiwan has the lawyers, banks, corporate governance, transparency, infrastructure and other important conditions for it to become one of the region's financial centers.
Asked whether it would be more realistic for Taiwan to turn itself into an asset management center rather than a financial one, Finch said Taiwan has to work out what is realistic.
"There are a number of major cities around the world -- New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore -- each of those cities are trying to establish themselves as all-around financial centers. I think London has succeeded," he said.
Create the conditions
Citing London's green areas, music, arts, economy, good government and asset management as some of the factors leading to the city's success in becoming a financial hub, Finch said Taiwan has some issues to work on if it wants to be an asset management center.
"You will have to take time to create the conditions -- transparency, good corporate law, good access to justice, the rule of law, stamping out corruption -- all those issues which worry us at the moment as well as any other city," Finch said.
"I don't know whether it's realistic for you to just to assume an appetite for asset management," he added. "I think you should have greater ambitions personally."
Finch met with Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
He said London's financial community respects Taiwan's achievements in recovering from the 2001 recession and in attaining economic stability through a series of economic changes.
One of the business leaders he met in Taipei was Chang Jung-fa (張榮發), chairman of the Evergreen Group, which owns EVA Airways.
Increase presence
Finch will also be giving a speech at a seminar entitled "UK PPP [public infrastructure financing] Expertise in Practice" in Taipei today. At the present time, Finch said, there is very little British involvement in Taiwan's infrastructure financing.
Hu Sheng-cheng (
Finch said Japanese contractors have been very active in Taiwan's infrastructure financing and noted that British companies also have ambitions to compete with their US and Japanese rivals here.
"Of course we shall compete with the Americans and the Japanese. We are competing with the Americans and the Japanese all around the world. Why wouldn't I want to compete with them in Taiwan? We can do the job better," he said.
However, in contrast to the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei's public call for the government to launch direct links with China as soon as possible, Finch declined to comment on the direct links issue, which he said is of a "political nature."
"I am not going to tell you or your politicians about your relationships with mainland China. That's not my job. My job is to encourage trade between the UK and Taiwan. You've got some one million Taiwanese now living in mainland China. You've got enormous investment into mainland China," he said.
"It is not my job to delve into the realms of politics," he continued. "My job is to promote trade. I believe I can do that successfully."
Finch, who regularly acts on behalf of the UK government as a host for hospitality provided by the corporation for visiting heads of state and foreign dignitaries, did not directly comment on how his city may help promote Taiwanese leaders' visits to the UK, currently hindered by China's opposition.
"I think trading relationships actually are perhaps the most important relationships in the end. We have seen a number of your senior leaders in London from time to time," he said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods