Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (工商協進會) chairman Lin Por-fong (林伯豐) yesterday said that he would not attend a Taiwan-US economic dialogue scheduled for today.
Lin on Tuesday said that he received an invitation from the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) to join the dialogue, at which US Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment Keith Krach is to attend with his delegation.
“The association will not send a substitute, because there is no time to find one,” the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported on its Web site yesterday, citing Lin.
Photo: CNA
The story cited sources saying that AIT does not like participants to talk about the event and conveyed its concerns after Lin spoke with the media.
Lin, who is chairman of Taiwan Glass Industry Corp (台灣玻璃) said that the association needs only to respond to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, because the ministry — not other institutes — is in charge of regulating and supporting local industries, he said.
Prior to Krach’s arrival, local media reported that he was to host the US-Taiwan Economic and Commercial Dialogue — a new platform established to bolster bilateral economic ties — after President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) last month said that the government would work to lift restrictions on imports of US pork and beef, days after US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar visited Taiwan.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained