Before the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) re-took power, it confidently said: “We’re ready!” But the achievements of the party’s first month in office show this was far from true. The government also said it was ready to deliver President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) first major election promise: allowing Chinese tourists to come to Taiwan. However, even KMT Central Standing Committee member Sean Lien (連勝文) said the nation’s airports are old and neglected, and that he worried Chinese tourists arriving at Taipei’s Songshan Airport would feel like they had landed in Pyongyang instead.
Harsh words, but Songshan is in a bad state. As Minister of Transportation and Communication Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said, this is the result of years of neglect. The Democratic Progressive Party administration not only opposed making Songshan the hub for direct cross-strait flights, it wanted to move the airport and turn the site into a park. So it wasn’t interested in investing in the airport.
While neighboring countries like Singapore have expanded their airports or built new ones like Hong Kong International Airport or Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, it is disheartening to see buildings at Taoyuan International Airport and Taipei Songshan Airport with ceiling stains from water leaks, broken windows, outdated customs clearance facilities and other problems. Even Chinese airlines representatives visiting Taiwan think there is room for improvement. With Taoyuan and Songshan airports in such a state of disrepair, imagine what other airports in the country look like.
People in the tourism industry can’t wait to get started in the cross-strait business: they are busy printing explanations in simplified Chinese, retraining their staff, studying the differences between Chinese and Taiwanese Mandarin and memorizing the exchange rate between the Chinese Yuan and the New Taiwan dollar. They are sparing no effort to make sure they are ready to welcome Chinese tourists.
But when a tourist’s first impression is a dilapidated airport, Taiwan’s reputation as a “beautiful island” could easily be destroyed. The government needs to increase efforts to renovate the airports, so that facilities are up-to-date and their standards of efficiency, safety, comfort and convenience are up to scratch.
It is also important to implement security and health checks for the expected influx. Undoubtedly, Chinese tourists will be a mixed bag. Most will be ordinary tourists, but a handful of smugglers, illegal immigrants and spies will also enter the country. If customs and immigration authorities are incapable of preventing this from happening by rapidly and efficiently monitoring suspicious individuals, it will take twice the effort to deal with the problem after unsavory individuals have entered the country.
There is also a great discrepancy in the quality of medical services on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Once a large number of Chinese tourists enter Taiwan, the protective screen for epidemics will disappear. The question is whether the Ministry of Health can work out an effective quarantine mechanism to prevent public heath disasters such as SARS from happening again.
Airport infrastructure is linked to national image. Although the airports cannot be repaired overnight, the government needs to show a determination to improve the nation’s tourism infrastructure.
Pat Gelsinger took the reins as Intel CEO three years ago with hopes of reviving the US industrial icon. He soon made a big mistake. Intel had a sweet deal going with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the giant manufacturer of semiconductors for other companies. TSMC would make chips that Intel designed, but could not produce and was offering deep discounts to Intel, four people with knowledge of the agreement said. Instead of nurturing the relationship, Gelsinger — who hoped to restore Intel’s own manufacturing prowess — offended TSMC by calling out Taiwan’s precarious relations with China. “You don’t want all of
A chip made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) was found on a Huawei Technologies Co artificial intelligence (AI) processor, indicating a possible breach of US export restrictions that have been in place since 2019 on sensitive tech to the Chinese firm and others. The incident has triggered significant concern in the IT industry, as it appears that proxy buyers are acting on behalf of restricted Chinese companies to bypass the US rules, which are intended to protect its national security. Canada-based research firm TechInsights conducted a die analysis of the Huawei Ascend 910B AI Trainer, releasing its findings on Oct.
In honor of President Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday, my longtime friend and colleague John Tkacik wrote an excellent op-ed reassessing Carter’s derecognition of Taipei. But I would like to add my own thoughts on this often-misunderstood president. During Carter’s single term as president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, despite numerous foreign policy and domestic challenges, he is widely recognized for brokering the historic 1978 Camp David Accords that ended the state of war between Egypt and Israel after more than three decades of hostilities. It is considered one of the most significant diplomatic achievements of the 20th century.
In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, titled “The Upside on Uncertainty in Taiwan,” Johns Hopkins University professor James B. Steinberg makes the argument that the concept of strategic ambiguity has kept a tenuous peace across the Taiwan Strait. In his piece, Steinberg is primarily countering the arguments of Tufts University professor Sulmaan Wasif Khan, who in his thought-provoking new book The Struggle for Taiwan does some excellent out-of-the-box thinking looking at US policy toward Taiwan from 1943 on, and doing some fascinating “what if?” exercises. Reading through Steinberg’s comments, and just starting to read Khan’s book, we could already sense that