As part of the President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) administration’s “new southbound policy,” the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) earlier this month established a committee for the development of overseas trade interests.
The 100-member committee, whose convener is DPP Secretary-General Hung Yao-fu (洪耀福), represents businesspeople investing in Southeast Asian nations and India, said a party official who declined to be named, adding the committee has recently begun cooperating with Indian universities.
The majority of the DPP’s development of ties in Southeast Asia has been the work of people recruited by former premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃), the official said, adding that the DPP’s connections have been made through Taiwanese factories that moved their operations to the region during Yu’s era.
The party aims to promote Tsai’s policy through Hsieh Shih-ying (謝世英), a businessman in the Philippines, and the ninth chairperson of the World Taiwanese Chambers of Commerce, the official said.
At its initial meeting on Oct. 5, the committee issued qualifications to just over 100 applicants, the majority of whom have business interests in Southeast Asia, sources said.
The committee members include about 10 former or current DPP members, including Department of Culture and Information director Super Meng (孟義超); and Taiwan Rolling Stock Co chairman Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯), a former legislator; and other former lawmakers Kao Chien-chih (高建智) and Chuang Suo-hang (莊碩漢).
One individual with knowledge of the committee who declined to be named said that while the DPP has traditionally limited its engagement with the business community to election periods, its current efforts are in the interest of developing a permanent forum for discussion of overseas economic development that civic groups can also be involved with.
The committee hopes this approach will support the aims of the “new southbound policy” and allow businesspeople operating in Southeast Asia to voice their suggestions, sources said.
Meng, who has recently returned from India, said the GDP of India is rapidly growing, as is the nation’s middle class.
Only about 30,000 Indians visit Taiwan annually, a number that he said could be increased considerably.
On his latest trip to India to exploring investment strategies alongside officials from the National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, he spoke with Taiwanese businesspeople working there, who brought up the issue of human resources.
Investors expressed an interest in combining India’s expertise in software development with Taiwan’s hardware industry, citing successes in training Indian students at Taiwanese universities and having them work at Taiwanese companies in India afterward, he said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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