At the end of March, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), along with a few securities and futures agencies, released the Corporate Governance 4.0: Sustainable Development Action Plan. In this document, gender equality is highlighted as one of the main criteria for companies in Taiwan.
The plan said that all listed and over-the-counter (OTC) companies would have to include at least one female board member. If a company fails to meet the standard, it would be barred from participating in an initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch. Clearly, officials have paid great attention to gender issues when outlining the corporate governance plan. Corporations and financial agencies have been discussing such a trend and ways of handling it.
Regarding the inclusion of women in corporate boards, officials of the Securities and Futures Bureau of the FSC stated that companies should increase their number of female board members. This is a standard in line with the international community. The board members would be more diversified and gender equality can be promoted. Therefore, having a female board member would become a prerequisite for an organization to launch an IPO.
Moreover, the corporate boards of all listed and OTC companies should have at least one female board member by next year.
As of now, 163 companies do not meet the standard and they are required to improve their status next year.
In response to this plan, some market participants believe that although the issue of gender equality is significant, a person’s ability should be emphasized more. The requirement to them is somewhat unreasonable and might cause inconvenience for some companies.
I would also like to shed light on a potential problem in this plan: the issue of aging. Many corporate leaders in Taiwan are in their 80s or 90s. Recent news reports have said that when one of the Far Eastern Group’s most important leaders, Chang Tsai-hsiung (張才雄), announced his retirement, he was almost 100 years old.
Despite his age, he is still a board member of a few listed and OTC companies. In Japan and South Korea, more than 30 percent of the people who are over 65 continue to work; in Taiwan, the number is only 6 percent.
As we are becoming an aging society. Those who are over 65 are likely to continue to work, as has happened in other countries. To cope with the situation, regulations regarding both aging and corporate governance should be revised as early as possible.
For instance, the statutory retirement age of 65 and the age for claiming pensions can both be raised. Official agencies can also come up with more incentives for the elderly to continue their careers.
In fact, the government should start considering providing more incentives now, so that corporate boards would treat their senior members with respect, and in turn, seniors can offer their valuable experience for their entire company.
The issue of aging would only become increasingly more serious in our society, and it must be addressed alongside the plan of corporate governance.
I would not say that my methods are the correct ones, but I would like to shed light on this issue, and here are my two cents for further discussion.
Cheng Ming-te is a professor in Taipei City University of Science and Technology’s department of business administration.
Translated by Emma Liu
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS