The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said yesterday that state-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC, 中國石油) and China Shipbuilding Corp (CSBC, 中國造船) would soon be renamed to include "Taiwan" in their company titles in accordance with government policy.
"Changing the names of state-run enterprises will help avoid confusion and increase Taiwan's international presence," Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) said.
The nation's largest oil refiner plans to change its name to "CPC, Taiwan" (台灣中油). The company will hold a board meeting on Friday to discuss the issue, said Liao Tsang-long (廖滄龍), deputy director of CPC's public relations division.
After the name change, instead of immediately removing signs and trademarks bearing the old name from gas stations and equipment, CPC will replace the signs and equipment when they become too old or are damaged, the company said.
Costly scheme
The replacement scheme will cost the company NT$70 million (US$2.13 million), CPC said, without giving the figure incurred from other issues related to the change, such as renewing contracts with domestic and overseas customers, reprinting business cards and company documents and redesigning its trademark.
The costs will put a heavy burden on CPC, as the company already saw losses of NT$18.7 billion last year because of high oil prices.
CSBC would also be renamed Taiwan International Shipbuilding Corp (台灣國際造船), CSBC president Fan Kuang-nan (范光男) said in a telephone interview yesterday. The company is also scheduled to hold a board meeting on Friday to discuss the issue.
It was difficult to estimate how much it would cost CSBC to complete the name change, especially in contract renewals, as its clients, suppliers and business partners may have different requirements when carrying out the procedure, Fan said.
CSBC has built a considerable reputation internationally in the shipbuilding industry and was ranked No. 17 in the receiving and delivery of orders last year, Fan said.
Long history
With a long history of doing business internationally, the name CSBC has hardly ever caused confusion among customers, he said.
"But in Taiwan, political concerns are always put ahead of business," he said.
Another company that has been targeted in the name change campaign is China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), but Chen did not address this yesterday.
CAL said earlier that its name was valuable in the greater China market.
Although previously well-known in the international community and with a large number of overseas branches, the state-controlled International Commercial Bank of China (ICBC, 中國國際商銀), is now called Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商銀) after merging with another state-run entity, Chiao Tung Bank (交通銀行).
"A company's title is a valuable asset that takes a lot of time and effort to establish ? any name change is bound to influence a company's reputation," Tung Shu-chi (董樹杞), assistant vice president of Mega's Ho Chi Minh City branch told the Taipei Times.
The issue of changing the name of state-run enterprises is part of the government's "name-rectification" policy, aimed at avoiding Taiwanese companies being mistaken for Chinese ones. The economics ministry is expected to announce other name changes next week.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS