Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Chen Ruey-long (
Chen said he doesn't think that changing the names of the Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC) and the China Shipbuilding Corp (CSBC) would hurt their operations.
Chen was responding to media reports that said the Executive Yuan had asked the two companies to submit their name-change plan by the end of this month and implement the changes by the end of June.
"If the Executive Yuan sets a deadline for the enterprises to complete the name changes, the Ministry of Economic Affairs will meet it," Chen said.
President Chen Shui-bian (
Premier Yu Shui-kun said recently that the name-change idea is still being actively pursued, with the CPC, the CSBC, Chunghwa Telecom, the International Commercial Bank of China, Chunghwa Post, and the Central Trust of China being the top priorities.
"It is necessary to make a name-change of state-owned enterprises, " Chen Ruey-long said, adding that the CPC and the CSBC are now working on the matter, hoping to find the best way to mitigate the impact on their operations.
"As the two companies have yet to submit their reports to the ministry, I have no way of predicting the actual expenses, but as long as the name changes are helpful to future operations, the expense will be bearable, " he said.
Asked whether the name changes will cause losses to the firms' reputations and brands, Chen said the CPC is mainly geared toward the domestic market, and its cooperation with foreign companies in exploration will not be affected by the name change.
The exports of oil products will hinge on quality and price, he said.
The technology and the quality of the CSBC have also won recognition, he said, and its operations have been good in recent years with customers lining up to place orders.
"The Ministry of Economic Affairs is confident that the operations of the CSBC will not be affected by the name change," he said.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
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: