Shop owners and suppliers in the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) sector have said their businesses are under threat after the sector was included in the cross-strait service trade agreement, adding that “the government is killing Taiwanese industry.”
“Under this government’s policy, traditional Chinese medicine businesses will disappear,” said Chu Pu-lin (朱溥霖), chairman of the National Union of Chinese Medicine Associations of the ROC.
Traditional Chinese medicine is among the sectors to be opened up to Chinese investment in the cross-strait pact, which was signed in Shanghai on Friday.
Chu said that about 90 percent of the ingredients and materials used in traditional herbal medicine are imported from China.
“For Taiwan, we do not produce these materials, and for the finished products, we cannot sell them back to China. The terms of the agreement are very unequal,” he said.
“Once we open up our market, Chinese companies can control the supplies at source. They also have much lower costs for labor, marketing and other overheads than Taiwanese firms. Once the market is opened up, there will be a price war,” he added.
Chu said that some Chinese firms currently sell their products through Taiwanese retailers, but under the cross-strait agreement, they will be able to make direct sales in Taiwan
“Chinese companies are close to their suppliers, and they have lower labor costs. Their overall prices will be cheaper than those of Taiwanese firms,” he added.
“The government is forcing Taiwanese traditional Chinese medicine companies to hand over this business to China,” Chu said. “Our government is supposed to help Taiwanese companies do business, but instead, they are trying to kill us off.”
Chu said the government had consulted with local TCM companies regarding the agreement and had encountered widespread opposition to inclusion in the pact.
“It seems the government did not care for our objections, and it did not explain contents of the agreement to us. Now the industry will have a hard time to adjust,” he said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS