A high-profile delegation will depart for Japan today to seek partners for joint ventures in technological innovations and new product commercialization.
It will be the first “road show” group to be sent abroad to solicit foreign investment and partnerships since the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) was signed with China on June 29.
“The group will visit 11 heavyweight Japanese corporations in the Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo areas to look for joint ventures in the fields of technological development, business management and market exploration,” said Minister without Portfolio Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘), who will lead the delegation.
Yiin said the main purpose of his mission will not be to encourage Japanese companies to set up plants in Taiwan, but to convince them to collaborate with Taiwan in research and development and in converting ideas and prototypes into viable products to make inroads into China and other markets around the world.
Once the ECFA takes effect next year, hundreds of Taiwanese products will be allowed to enter China tariff-free and some Taiwanese service sectors will also enjoy easier market access to China.
“In the wake of the signing of the ECFA, the government’s priority is to find ways to cash in on these advantages to create more opportunities for international cooperation and joint ventures to help boost our economic development,” Yiin said.
Yiin said that during the trip, which ends next Sunday, his delegation will brief Japanese business executives on Taiwan’s desire to integrate with Japan and China to form a modern, high-tech version of the Silk Road.
The group expects to sign five memorandums of understanding on technological cooperation and a letter of intent on cooperation with Japanese conglomerates, Yiin said without elaborating.
It will also lobby three Japanese high-tech giants — Fujitsu, NEC and Mitsubishi — to form a joint venture system integration company with their Taiwanese counterparts to develop WiMAX technologies, Yiin said, adding that the three Japanese conglomerates have shown keen interest in the proposal.
The Japanese companies that Yiin’s group intends to visit cover a wide range of sectors from green energy, creative and cultural industries, digital content and financial services, to information and communication technologies and precision machinery.
Yiin said he believes that the upcoming trip will help build up a new, cooperative Taiwan-Japan business model.
Moreover, he predicted that interactions between Taiwanese and Japanese businesses will become even closer following the signing of the ECFA, particularly after the launch of direct flights between Taipei Songshan Airport and Shanghai Hongqiao Airport.
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