China hopes to rebuild its supply chain by wooing Taiwanese businesses at this year’s Cross-Strait CEO Summit (CSCS) to be held today in the Chinese city of Xiamen, a source said yesterday.
This year’s summit would focus on “building a cross-strait industrial chain in the new era and promoting cross-strait economic integration and development,” promotional materials for the event said.
The aim is to encourage Taiwanese businesspeople who have exited the Chinese market to return and invest there as a means of countering various technology export controls that China has been encountering, the source said.
Photo: AFP
Former premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) and former Beijing mayor Guo Jinlong (郭金龍), the summit’s co-chairs, are expected to deliver speeches at the event’s opening ceremony.
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning (王滬寧) attended the event last year, during which he read a letter from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and delivered a speech. However, it has not been determined whether he would attend this year, the source said.
Other Taiwanese attendees include former vice-premier Woody Duh (杜紫軍) and former minister of economic affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘), both Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members, as well as former KMT vice chairman Steve Chan (詹啟賢).
However, Third Wednesday Club (三三會) chairman Lin Por-fong (林伯豐), who is known to be close to Beijing, pulled out of the event at the last minute saying he had “something else” to take care of, sending the organization’s secretary-general in his place.
Some Taiwanese industry leaders had not initially planned to attend, but later agreed to do so after Beijing threatened that they should “carefully consider the consequences of non-attendance,” the source said.
“They were worried that investments and company offices in China might be put under pressure, and in the end, they had no choice but to attend the summit in a low-key manner,” the source said.
Beijing has also recently used “soft and hard tactics” to pressure Taiwanese businesspeople not to withdraw from China, the source said.
“At the same time, Taiwanese businesspeople are being invited, through contacts in China and Taiwan, to participate in investment events in Xinjiang Province, Tibet and other places,” they said.
Citing an example, the source said that a former Mainland Affairs Council official who is a member of the KMT had been scheduled to lead a delegation of Taiwanese investors to Xinjiang in September, but the plan was canceled after it was exposed by the media in Taiwan.
The government has warned Taiwanese technology investors who enter the Chinese market that doing so could impact their future prospects.
This is particularly the case for investors who are found to be an accomplice of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which China has been found to be supporting through trade, the source said.
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