The nation's textile industry plans to invest more than NT$20 billion (US$576 million) in China this year, in anticipation of growing sales opportunities following China's expected entry into the WTO.
Growing labor costs and stricter environmental standards in Taiwan are also prompting many textile manufacturers to move to China, said an official of Taiwan Textile Federation (
Taiwan currently restricts China-bound investments, though many business groups have been pressuring the government to ease its policy, hoping to move production lines across the Taiwan Strait and take advantage of lower costs there.
Meanwhile, the industry's investment within Taiwan dropped to a six-year low of NT$3.4 billion in the first half of 2001. For the whole of last year, the textile industry's investment came to NT$9.6 billion.
Most of the industry's investments in Taiwan are made in the man-made fiber sector, according to Liu Jui-tu (
Over the past six years, the industry invested a total of NT$87.8 billion into 69 large-scale investment projects, he added.
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