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.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS