The heads of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) demonstrated outside the legislature in Taipei yesterday, calling for people to buy more Taiwan-made products to boost the economy and urging the government to set up sale centers to promote businesses.
The rally was organized by the Alliance of Taiwan Manufacturing Industries, a coalition of leading firms in traditional industries, many of them in central and southern Taiwan, including manufacturers of clothing, towels, luggage, textiles, socks, sunglasses, umbrellas, jeans, hats, furniture and ceramics.
Two long tables displayed a sampling of their products.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Demonstrators shouted slogans such as: “Boost the economy, save Taiwan,” and “Buy Taiwanese products, keep jobs at home for our children and grandchildren.”
“We are experiencing a wave of redundancies and closures because of the stagnant economy. We need the government’s help to provide better incentives for our industries and to have better policies to promote MIT products,” alliance chairman Huang Kuang-yi (黃光藝) said.
Traditional industries are facing difficulties with the worldwide economic slowdown, but the situation has gotten worse because China is carrying out a “policy to impoverish Taiwan,” Huang said.
“China’s aim is to wreck our economy,” he said.
“When Taiwanese are poor and have no job prospects, they will be economically dependent on China and might seek political unification with China,” he said. “So Beijing has cut quotas for tourists to Taiwan and is reducing trade with our manufacturers.”
Huang said that MIT products account for about 20 percent of the domestic market and this proportion could increase if Taiwanese endorsed a “Buy MIT products” campaign.
“Buying more Taiwan-made products support many SMEs in the traditional industries and keesp jobs in Taiwanese hands,” Huang said. “It benefits everyone when every sector of industry is invigorated; it boosts the local economy and helps make the nation stronger.”
Rally organizers called for designated exhibition halls and MIT product centers nationwide.
“We keep hearing complaints from tourists — Chinese or otherwise — that they would like to buy Taiwan-made items to take home, but they cannot find them in shopping malls and do not know where to look for MIT products,” Huang said. “The solution is to turn to malls and display centers, which are operated at a loss by state enterprises like Taiwan Sugar Corp, into MIT outlets.
Changhua County Hosiery Industry Association chairman Chang Chin-chang (張晉章) said locally made socks and hosiery as well as other textile products have a reputation for high quality and reasonable prices, while products face stringent government testing and inspections.
“The hosiery industry has seen annual sales of about NT$11 billion [US$345 million] and employed about 20,000 Taiwanese, but this year we have seen a decline of about 35 percent in exports and 40 percent in domestic sales,” he said.
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:
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater