National Communications Commission (NCC) Chairperson Howard Shyr (石世豪) yesterday said that the commission plans to examine claims that the cable service operator Taiwan Broadband Communications (TBC) has received funding from Chinese investors.
TBC’s major shareholder Macquarie Group launched its Asia Pay Television Trust (APTT) on the Singapore Exchange in May.
The cable service operator then applied for permission to change its overseas investment structure, which was approved by the NCC last week.
Currently, Taiwan bans direct Chinese investment in local media outlets and telecom companies.
However, a story reported by the Chinese-language China Times yesterday said APTT had drawn funds from Chinese investors, which could generate national security concerns.
The commission’s handling of the case was heavily criticized by the lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday.
In response, Shyr said the commission would review the facts, and spend two days investigating the matter.
Shyr said the NCC commissioners spent four hours deliberating before they decided to grant TBC’s request because some commissioners thought the change should not be approved.
He added that stocks in initial public offerings (IPOs) would draw funding from all over the world.
“APTT’s contract promised that the group would buy back shares purchased by Chinese investors,” Shyr said, adding that any change in management would be close scrutinized.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Kuo-cheng (林國正) asked why the NCC approved the change if TBC’s board had not told the truth in the first place.
“Many companies have launched IPOs overseas to bypass government regulations,” he said.
The committee passed a resolution requesting the NCC to deliver a report on its investigation into the TBC’s overseas shareholding structure before tomorrow.
Shyr said that previously such cases only needed to be approved by the Investment Commission.
However, he said the Investment Commission had agreed that any investment in media outlets needed to be reviewed by the NCC as well.
Meanwhile, the NCC issued a statement yesterday saying it had requested TBC to identify the APTT shareholders and submit information on them to the commission as soon as possible.
It added that TBC would be required to follow regulations governing the investment fund set by China and the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法).
“The commission made investments from China, Hong Kong and Macau a crucial item when it reviewed changes to TBC’s overseas investment structure,” the statement said.
“TBC was told that it was supposed to inform both the Singapore Exchange, as well as the NCC, when changes in the number of beneficiary certificates of the fund exceed 5 percent. Should APTT want to change its trust fund manager, it would need to file a new application with the NCC and follow the relevant laws in Taiwan,” it said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods