After having property worth US$1 million stolen from his factory in Beijing in 1999, William Kao (高為邦) established an association for victims of investment fraud in China and has since dedicated himself to demanding justice for Taiwanese businesspeople based in China, known as taishang.
In order to get a picture of the real investment environment in China, Kao interviewed more than 100 taishang, recording their stories and setting out to make the non-economic risks known to those thinking of exploring the huge Chinese market.
"It is encouraging to hear the Chinese authorities say that they will offer economic favors to Taiwanese-funded firms, but people have to keep in mind that it is not always economic factors that cause so many taishang to fail in China," Kao said, responding to a series of measures Beijing recently proposed aimed at supporting taishang.
The measures include up to 30 billion yuan (US$3.9 billion) in loans to be made available by a state bank, a newly established agency for solving business disputes and a promise to meet the requests of taishang on issues such as health, education, and living services.
"These are just China's tricks. Based on my personal experiences and those of many others, pillaging taishang's property is China's real state policy," he said.
Before becoming a full-time organizer of the victims association, Kao was a successful businessman, who started a factory manufacturing glass-fiber-reinforced plastic products in the Yanjiao (
Initially everything went well, with the production line in operation and the first container-load being sent to the US within three months of the factory opening. Kao never expected that all his property would soon be stolen by his Chinese counterpart, Yue Hongjun (
"At that time, three employees were on duty in the factory, and they were helpless to prevent the 40 people from moving all the machinery equipment, materials, molds, and finished products away. They plundered everything and then began manufacturing the same products in Yue's factory," Kao said.
Kao said that his legal case has been suspended in the court, which is a situation that many Taiwanese businesspeople endure.
"As far as I know, and from interviewing more than 100 Taiwan-ese victims, very few people win their lawsuits. And those who have won the lawsuits didn't get compensation. One victim told me that the Chinese judge and governmental officials asked him to share half of the compensation with him after he won the case," Kao said.
According to government statistics, the number of cases of taishang filing complaints to Taiwan's Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) has exceeded 1,200, and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, the SEF's counterpart in China, has had up to 5,000 complaints filed.
"I believe that these statistics are still not a true reflection, since many taishang are warned by the Chinese Public Security Bureau not to disclose their experiences, as it is then more likely that they will get their property back," Kao said.
These cases have proved that the Law of the People's Republic of China on Protection of Investment by Compatriots From Taiwan (台灣同胞投資保護法), enacted in 1994, and its rules for implementation issued in 1999 are actually useless, he said.
"While it's true that China hasn't enacted such a law for other foreign investors, it doesn't mean that Taiwanese investors are better protected. On the contrary, foreign investors receive better protection thanks to the power that their governments have. The Taiwanese government is incapable of backing taishang," Kao said.
"I know a US citizen who was sentenced to 16 years in prison because of tax evasion problems in Shanghai. The US government not only raised its concern with China, but it also sent representatives to visit him many times while he was in prison. I don't think this would happen with taishang and the Taiwanese government," Kao said.
On the basis of these experiences, Kao said that the reason behind China proposing so many benefits for taishang is not for their protection, but for making taishang lower their guard against China's lawless society.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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