The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) will soon establish criteria to assess applications by Chinese banks planning to open branches in Taiwan after a financial accord with China comes into effect in the middle of next month, commission Vice Chairwoman Lee Jih-chu (李紀珠) said yesterday.
Lee made the comment at a seminar in Taipei, where the Beijing-based Agricultural Bank of China (中國農民銀行) expressed an interest in opening branches in Taipei.
Chinese banks wishing to open branches in Taiwan will have to be examined, she said, adding that the recent global financial crisis had exposed many defects in the cross-strait financial supervisory systems.
Lee said the commission was in the process of revising those regulations.
Agricultural Bank of China vice president Yang Kun (楊琨) told reporters yesterday that while the bank intends to open a branch in Taiwan, it has yet to consider acquiring shares in Taiwanese banks because he was not familiar with Taiwan’s regulations.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) last week told media that for the moment, Taiwanese financial institutions would not be opened to Chinese investment.
The Agricultural Bank yesterday launched a new debit card tailor-made for customers shopping on credit in Taiwan, which could serve as a stepping stone for deeper financial cooperation with local banks.
The bank is working together with China UnionPay (中國銀聯) in issuing the debit cards to meet demand by a growing number of Chinese tourists. Chinese people are only allowed to take 20,000 yuan (US$2,930) on their visits to Taiwan.
The launch of the debit card represents “the beginning of cross-strait cooperation and will facilitate increased collaboration,” Yang told another press briefing, without elaborating.
The bank’s clients began using the debit cards in August and have spent more than 300 million yuan in Taiwan, China UnionPay said.
The number of Chinese tourists nearly tripled to 766,026 in the first 10 months of this year, compared with last year’s 258,852, making up more than 21 percent of the total of 3.53 million tourists to Taiwan, the latest statistics by the Tourism Bureau showed.
The bank’s debit card holders can shop at more than 6,000 stores across Taiwan.
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Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
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