The long wait to invest in China may soon be over for Taiwanese chipmakers, as Premier Yu Shyi-kun appears set to finalize the policy by Friday and send it off to the Legislature for final approval, sources said yesterday.
"The policy has already been sent to the Premier's office and he will hold a meeting on Friday to determine whether or not it will meet approval from all sides," a source close to the situation said.
The question of allowing Taiwanese chipmakers to invest in China raised so much emotion earlier this year that thousands took to the streets in protest and calls were made for the Vice Premier Lin Hsin-yi (
Taiwan Semiconductor Manu-facturing Co (TSMC,
Until the government rules are set, chipmkers cannot make the leap, costing them valuable time.
"We can't even accept their applications to invest in China until the management policy is in place ... the Taiwan Solidarity Union has been very insistent on this point," said Su Jeong-feng (
The premier promised to send the policy proposal to the legislature by May 10, but politicians grappled on a host of issues, chiefly, "ensuring that sensitive technologies will be protected and managing the movement of high-tech workers across the Strait," said James Chou (
Companies have already filed complaints against former workers believed to have passed sensitive technology on to new competitors in China.
TSMC's chairman said over 400 Taiwanese engineers have signed on with Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co (SMIC,
A former TSMC employee was charged with industrial espionage.
The Taiwan Solidarity Union wants the government to take action against SMIC and Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (宏力半導體) for jumping the gun on investment in China. Both companies are partially backed by Taiwanese capital and know-how.
SMIC CEO Richard Chang (
So far, no action has been taken against either company.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
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
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