Taiwan-based companies, big and small, with ties to Canada will soon see their social calendar fill up as the Canadian Society in Taiwan prepares to reinvent itself as a Canadian chamber of commerce in Taiwan, with a greater focus on business and a more dynamic list of activities.
With a new board of directors, including the chiefs of major business players, such as Ford and Lion Travel, the chamber of commerce will hold its first social event on Thursday at the Brass Monkey between 7pm and 9pm, providing a chance for members old and new to learn more about the organization’s plans for the future and to widen their social network.
In a telephone interview yesterday, Canadian Society in Taiwan president Leo Seewald told the Taipei Times the newly revamped organization would set up networking meetings for its members every second month and lunch meetings with speakers from the business community or visiting Canadian diplomats every month in between.
Representatives from big multinationals to small businesses are all welcome to join, Seewald said, as long as their operations have a “Canada slant” — a connection to Canada in terms of the products or services they offer or who they cater to.
For the first year, the membership fee would be NT$500, a bargain compared with that asked of members joining other chambers of commerce in Taiwan, he said. Barring concerns from regulatory authorities, the official name of the new organization is expected to be the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan.
Although the organization is in the process of redesigning its Web site, information on how to join and contact information is available on the Canadian Society in Taiwan Web site at www.canadiansociety.org.
According to the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei, Taiwan is Canada’s fourth-largest trade partner in Asia and 13th worldwide. Canada’s priority sectors in Taiwan are information and communications technology, agriculture and agri-food, life sciences, building and construction and transportation, with intensifying efforts to promote investment and innovation partnerships.
A survey of young Taiwanese showed that only 36.5 percent of men and 19.6 percent of women believe marriage is important, a trend that academics say is key to the nation’s low birthrate. Yang Wen-shan (楊文山), an adjunct research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology, yesterday announced the 12th round of results from a longitudinal survey of attitudes among young Taiwanese toward markers of adulthood. While few of the respondents, who were aged 28 to 32 when surveyed in 2017, found marriage to be important, 95.8 percent believed that being responsible for oneself should take precedence, data showed. Economic independence came in
SHRINKING FEMALE POPULATION: Last year, 107.74 boys were born for every 100 girls in Taiwan, which is a greater gender imbalance than in Japan and South Korea The Ministry of the Interior recorded 9,601 births in January, the first time the nation has produced fewer than 10,000 newborns in a single month, while different indicators showed that Taiwan might also be facing a population with increasingly fewer births, women and marriages. It comes after the ministry reported a record low 165,249 births last year, which was lower than the 173,156 deaths recorded last year. The nation experienced negative population growth for the first time last year, ministry data found. The number of births in January also dropped from a year earlier, when there were 12,510 births. In February, there were
The Hualien District Prosecutors’ Office has listed six people as suspects in a judicial investigation into a fatal train crash on Friday last week. Fifty people were killed and more than 200 were injured when the Taroko Express No. 408 train slammed into a crane truck that had slid onto the tracks near the entrance of Cingshuei Tunnel (清水隧道) in Hualien’s Sioulin Township (秀林). The office also summoned six officials at the Taiwan Railways Administration’s (TRA) Hualien Engineering Section for questioning about alleged illegal business operations and unsafe work conditions by Yi Hsiang Industry Co and Tung Hsin Construction Co, the two
SUPPORTING DEMOCRACY IN ASIA: Twitter aims to ‘play a unique role in enabling the public conversation around important social movements,’ the US company said Twitter has thrown its support behind the “Milk Tea Alliance” of democracy movements in Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia, defying China at a time when Beijing is punishing Western companies for commenting on what it considers internal matters. The social media company yesterday prominently displayed flags of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Myanmar and Thailand while unveiling an emoji to support democracy advocates in places that have in the past few years seen historic protests and share a love for the beverage. The emoji will automatically show up when users post the #MilkTeaAlliance hashtag, which was posted been 11 million times
RSS