A leading Taiwanese businessman yesterday urged the president to make direct links with China a reality, saying a president shouldn't just speak without taking action.
Wang Yung-ching (王永慶), chairman of the Formosa Group, made the remark yesterday at a seminar on President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) cross-strait policies over the past two years. The event was held by the National Policy Foundation, a KMT think tank.
Direct links between Taiwan and China would cover transportation, post and trade.
When asked to comment on Chen's speech on May 10, in which Chen said that opening direct links was unavoidable, Wang said, "President Chen, as the head of state, should credit his own words with real moves. If he postpones for too long, then people will question his credibility."
On May 10, during a trip to southern Taiwan with leading figures in the media, Chen made several proposals to improve cross-strait ties. Among these, Chen said the government would consider authorizing civil groups to negotiate with China on the issue of direct links.
Wang is particularly keen to open direct trade with China.
Should direct trade become possible across the Taiwan Strait, he said, Taiwanese raw-material suppliers could ship goods to China from Taiwan, instead of moving their operations to China.
"In that way, Taiwanese industries could stay at home and be more competitive."
Wang said the cost of shipping raw materials from Taiwan to China was about the same as transporting them from Kaohsiung to Taipei by truck.
He warned that if the government did not take action, within 10 years Taiwanese industries would lose their competitiveness and foreign firms would leave Taiwan."
He urged the government not to worry about the migration of manufacturing to China and to adopt a more open approach toward economic issues to ensure the long-term development of Taiwanese industries.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS