Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators said yesterday that letting Chinese investors manipulate the nation’s real estate market would raise prices and that more and more people, especially from the younger generation, would not be able to afford homes.
The remarks came as a group of Chinese property tycoons continued their tour of the nation yesterday.
DPP caucus deputy whip Pan Meng-an (潘孟安) said during a press conference yesterday morning that Chinese investors needed approval from Beijing before they could spend their money abroad.
PHOTO : AP
Even if their investments are approved, Pan said, it would not necessarily be a good thing for the public because the potentially large number of Chinese investors could manipulate the real estate sector and cause a surge in prices.
“The only happy people will be the owners of Taiwanese construction businesses,” Pan said. “They will have lots of chances to make more money. But for the rest of us, it will become more and more difficult to afford an apartment home.”
DPP Legislator Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲) cited Hong Kong as an example of what could happen if the government does not carefully regulate Chinese investment in real estate. He said Chinese investors had poured a lot of money into Hong Kong real estate, causing prices to soar over the past decade. The ballooning prices have made it an impossible dream for young adults to buy homes, he said.
“The most important issue concerning us is that we want to avoid a situation in which rich people become richer and richer and poor people become more and more desperate,” DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅) said.
Pan said the DPP was not opposed to the idea of letting in Chinese investment to bolster the economy, but the party is against the sudden lifting of restrictions without first putting necessary mechanisms in place to protect the public’s interests.
The group of potential property developers was the first group of investors to visit since the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) won the presidential election on March 22.
The group includes a number of self-made billionaires who have cashed in on China’s breakneck economic growth.
The group said it is interested in learning about leisure and tourism investment opportunities in anticipation of the opening of Taiwan to Chinese tourists.
“This is an exploration trip,” said Liu Changle (劉長樂), a developer and chairman of Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite Television. “Taiwan has an important property market in the Greater China and Asian region.”
Sites on the group’s itinerary included a NT$46 billion (US$1.5 billion) commercial-leisure complex in Taichung and a NT$10 billion yachting-theme park complex near a bay in Pingtung.
Pan Shiyi (潘石屹) of Soho China, also in the group, said the prospect of thousands of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan made Taiwanese hotels and leisure-related investments highly attractive.
“We have 1.3 billion Chinese,” he said. “If they can get here by direct flights ... I think there will be a lot of interest in that.”
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