Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) and French Office in Taipei Director Jean-Francois Casabonne-Masonnave on Tuesday signed an agreement to promote cooperation on virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed-reality development.
The possibilities for cooperation between the two nations on XR — the collective term for the three technologies — is endless. Institutions in France such as the Louvre are using XR for virtual tours amid the COVID-19 pandemic, while French firms such as immersiv.io are using them to facilitate an immersive experience for sports fans, for example providing real-time player locations on a soccer field.
In Taiwan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has used VR to highlight the government’s successes and challenges in containing the pandemic, and has shared an English-language version of a 3D video at youtu.be/9QtUzEyvpw4.
Perhaps more importantly, XR has helped Taiwanese firms promote themselves at trade fairs amid travel restrictions and health concerns due to the pandemic. In July last year, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council set up an online VR platform for businesses that had been scheduled to attend the Hannover Industrial Fair in Germany, and this month, the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Taiwan Tech Arena launched a VR pavilion that allowed start-ups to remotely participate at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Taiwan is home to TSMC, one of the biggest names in semiconductor and video processing technologies, which produces chips used in many XR applications. Taiwan can provide the hardware and software for French applications, or cooperate with French software engineers on their development. Taiwan could also help host French applications, given the nation’s strengths in fixed and mobile network infrastructure.
Taiwan and France have cooperated in other areas in the past few years, as highlighted in talks between the Ministry of Culture and the French Office in 2018 on promoting Taipei as a hub for non-governmental organizations, and cultural exchanges, such as France hosting Taiwanese start-ups and Taiwanese artists participating in French art festivals.
The future of Taiwan-France relations could develop in two important ways: First, as XR and other remote-computing technologies would be of growing importance in the wake of the pandemic, the two countries can leverage their experience to be industry leaders. Second, given that France has expressed concerns over China’s expansionism and its suppression of Taiwan on the global stage, it is likely that Taipei could leverage those concerns to promote military cooperation with Paris.
On Dec. 7 last year, the Sankei Shimbun reported that France is to join the US and Japan in military drills in the East China Sea in May.
“This is a message aimed at China. This is a message about multilateral partnerships and the freedom of passage,” French Navy Chief of Staff Pierre Vandier told the Japanese newspaper in an interview.
As the report suggested that the drills are motivated by Chinese ambitions over the Diaoyutais (釣魚島) — which Japan also claims and calls the Senkakus — Taiwan has a vested interest in participating.
Taiwan has purchased military equipment from France, so military cooperation between the two countries is not out of the question. France made its position clear in May last year when it announced the sale to Taiwan of weapons to upgrade French warships sold to the country nearly 30 years ago.
Responding to Chinese criticisms over the weapons sale, it said that it “respects the contractual commitments it made with Taiwan and has not changed its position since 1994.”
Taiwan and France clearly have shared interests in regional stability and technology development. The government must act on these interests to bolster the relationship.
In the past month, two important developments are poised to equip Taiwan with expanded capabilities to play foreign policy offense in an age where Taiwan’s diplomatic space is seriously constricted by a hegemonic Beijing. Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) led a delegation of Taiwan and US companies to the Philippines to promote trilateral economic cooperation between the three countries. Additionally, in the past two weeks, Taiwan has placed chip export controls on South Africa in an escalating standoff over the placing of its diplomatic mission in Pretoria, causing the South Africans to pause and ask for consultations to resolve
An altercation involving a 73-year-old woman and a younger person broke out on a Taipei MRT train last week, with videos of the incident going viral online, sparking wide discussions about the controversial priority seats and social norms. In the video, the elderly woman, surnamed Tseng (曾), approached a passenger in a priority seat and demanded that she get up, and after she refused, she swung her bag, hitting her on the knees and calves several times. In return, the commuter asked a nearby passenger to hold her bag, stood up and kicked Tseng, causing her to fall backward and
In South Korea, the medical cosmetic industry is fiercely competitive and prices are low, attracting beauty enthusiasts from Taiwan. However, basic medical risks are often overlooked. While sharing a meal with friends recently, I heard one mention that his daughter would be going to South Korea for a cosmetic skincare procedure. I felt a twinge of unease at the time, but seeing as it was just a casual conversation among friends, I simply reminded him to prioritize safety. I never thought that, not long after, I would actually encounter a patient in my clinic with a similar situation. She had
A recent trio of opinion articles in this newspaper reflects the growing anxiety surrounding Washington’s reported request for Taiwan to shift up to 50 percent of its semiconductor production abroad — a process likely to take 10 years, even under the most serious and coordinated effort. Simon H. Tang (湯先鈍) issued a sharp warning (“US trade threatens silicon shield,” Oct. 4, page 8), calling the move a threat to Taiwan’s “silicon shield,” which he argues deters aggression by making Taiwan indispensable. On the same day, Hsiao Hsi-huei (蕭錫惠) (“Responding to US semiconductor policy shift,” Oct. 4, page 8) focused on
RSS