More than a third of respondents in a poll believe the cross-strait service trade agreement will bring more harm than benefit to the nation, increasing doubts on whether it would be able to clear the legislature during the fall session, a survey by Cathay Financial Holdings Co (國泰金控) showed yesterday
About 36.5 percent of the 20,846 respondents polled online expressed concern over the potential unfavorable impact of the trade agreement, which calls for Taiwan and China to open their services industry.
LEGISLATIVE BOYCOTT
The agreement, which the two sides inked on June 21, still has to be approved by the legislature before it can take effect. A special legislative session failed to address the issue due to boycott from opposition parties.
Only 14.4 percent thought the trade pact would bring positive benefits, while another 32.4 percent were neutral on the issue, and the remaining 16.7 percent said they had no idea at all, according to the survey conducted by e-mail from Aug. 1 to Aug. 7.
The finding bodes ill for the agreement’s fate, despite the government’s promotion of the trade agreement.
Of the pessimists, 32.1 percent voiced concern over intensified market competition, 20.5 percent were uneasy about fewer job opportunities and 17.9 percent expected their standard of living to deteriorate, the survey said.
A total of 16.4 percent thought an influx of Chinese workers could add to the problem of stagnant wage levels, the survey found.
Only 13.1 percent said the influence would be very limited, it found.
Many Taiwanese financial services providers are hoping the agreement would be approved to facilitate their expansion.
For instance, Taiwanese financial service providers cannot join hands with Chinese partners in setting up securities houses in China, and Chinese lenders cannot own stakes in local banks until after the agreement goes into practice.
Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行), the banking arm of SinoPac Financial Holding Co (永豐金控), has struck a deal to sell 20 percent of its stock to the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (中國工商銀行) via a private placement. The agreement will expire on April 1 next year.
Likewise, Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) cannot enter into a partnership with Fujian Investment & Development Group (福建省投資開發集團) in setting up a securities house in China’s Fujian Province, where Fubon Financial would have a 51 percent controlling stake.
CONSUMER CONFIDENCE
Separately, Cathay Financial’s monthly survey of public confidence in the economy showed a modest pickup this month, after the government’s business monitoring signal flashed a “green” light last month, indicating stable economic conditions at home.
Many respondents also expressed slightly more willingness to spend money after the inflationary pressure eased to 0.08 percent last month, while the world economy was on track for a slow recovery, the survey said.
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Bank of America Corp nearly doubled its forecast for the nation’s economic growth this year, adding to a slew of upgrades even after a rip-roaring last year propelled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI). The firm lifted its projection to 8 percent from 4.5 percent on “relentless global demand” for the hardware that Taiwanese companies make, according to a note dated yesterday by analysts including Xiaoqing Pi (皮曉青). Taiwan’s GDP expanded 8.63 percent last year, the fastest pace since 2010. The increase “reflects our sustained optimism over Taiwan’s technology driven expansion and is reinforced by several recent developments,” including a more stable currency,
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
RSS