The legislature yesterday passed an amendment to a law that will allow Chinese from across the Taiwan Strait to invest in real estate in Taiwan.
Reaction to the amendment were mixed on whether it would spur large amounts of capital into the country to bolster the lagging property market, saying there were better deals at home in China.
Several amendments to the Statute Governing the Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (
While legislators set out to overturn the previous law that made any Chinese investment in real estate illegal, they left in a clause whereby applications from Chinese would by subject to approval by related government agencies.
In effect, the government still maintains the right to veto applications from what they might consider dubious Chinese investors.
Derek Huang (
"We haven't seen lots of Chinese people visiting Taiwan, so that's we why we still doubt such an announcement on real estate will alter the market," Huang said.
It is unclear as to when the first Chinese investment might be seen, as the task of establishing the details of how the system will work have been left to the Ministry of the Interior and related agencies.
Despite hopes that Chinese capital will revitalize the ailing real-estate sector, some feel the market simply doesn't offer big enough returns on commercial real estate when compare to cities such as Shanghai and Beijing.
Huang said he didn't expect a flood of Chinese investment in the wake of the amendment.
"We don't expect that there will be many Chinese investors interested in the real-estate market in Taiwan," he said. "Returns on real estate here are low compared with those in China ... Shanghai has better rental yields and capital gains."
According to a recent report by CB Richard Ellis, rental yields -- which are the percentage differences between the capital value of property and annual rental returns -- on office properties in the fourth quarter of last year were 14 percent in Shanghai and 17 percent in Beijing.
According to Calvin Wang (
"The market in Shanghai is growing very fast," said Wang. "The Taipei market is improving, but the gap is still there."
Low rental yields in Taipei are the result of inflated property prices, which have remained high since rampant speculation during the 1980s. The Taipei office market may not improve anytime soon.
Colliers Jardine reported that the office-vacancy rate in Taipei increased from 2.83 percent in 2000 to 8.35 percent by the end of last year, with oversupply expected to continue until 2004.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
RSS