Procedures were introduced yesterday that will allow senior professionals who are Chinese nationals employed by multinational companies in Taiwan to apply for working visas.
The government will now process, within 10 working days, applications submitted by companies for three-year working visas for Chinese nationals, their spouses and children under the age of 18.
A special cross-ministry examination panel will take care of such applications to ensure speedy approvals. The change is effective immediately.
The companies will also be able to apply to extend their Chinese employees' working visas for a year at a time for an unlimited number of years.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), announced the policy change following a meeting between Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and executives from various multinational companies' Taiwan branches yesterday.
The council said that related ministries had held negotiations on the matter at the end of July, during which they reached a consensus to set up the examination panel to provide fast and easy application procedures for international companies' Chinese employees.
Among those present at yesterday's meeting were Richard Vuylsteke, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce; Guy Wittich, CEO of the European Chamber of Commerce; Kazuhiro Kasama, Director of Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Public Information Committee; and managers from United Airlines, General Electronics, Phillips, ING, Procter & Gamble and Sony.
Jeff Yang (楊家駿), the director of the MAC's department of legal affairs, told reporters after the closed-door meeting that companies had welcomed the news.
He said, however, that the new measure only applies to top executives and other senior managers, as well as "specialists" employed by multinationals and their families.
Previously such people could only travel to Taiwan in accordance with the terms of a strict and complicated administrative order which categorizes Chinese nationals by individual professions and requires the government to carry out rigorous checks on each applicant.
"We hope to provide fast and easy measures for Chinese nationals in international companies to come to Taiwan as we committed to doing so when applying to enter the WTO," Yang said.
Yang said the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services states that the cross-border supply of services -- and also transactions involving the cross-border movement of capital and labor -- should be done "without unnecessary restrictions."
The new measure also entitles international companies to apply for their Chinese business visitors and employees who need to attend training programs in Taiwan to come for one visit of up to two months (but extendable to 4 months) per year.
According to Yang, the MAC is working on a separate, new and comprehensive administrative order to regulate migration of Chinese businessmen to Taiwan.
"We have seen the urgent needs of international companies, and the special examination panel is a temporary measure to fulfill such needs. It will be abandoned as we produce more comprehensive regulations," Yang said.
But for now, the new measure does not benefit Taiwanese firms.
"In the new, comprehensive, administrative order regulating the migration of Chinese businessmen to Taiwan, we will consider to allowing domestic companies to hire Chinese nationals and entitle them to apply working visas for them. But that's the next stage," he said.
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