Chinese investors should be allowed to immigrate to Taiwan, a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker said yesterday as he called on the government to address the outflow of capital.
KMT Legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) said there has been a disproportionate capital flow between Taiwan and China since the government lifted the ban on Chinese investment in June 2009.
“From 2009 to the end of last year, 2,624 cases of Taiwanese investment, amounting to US$60.8 billion, have gone to China, while only 619 cases of Chinese investment, worth US$1.199 billion, have come to Taiwan,” Ting said.
Taiwan’s market is too small to attract foreign investment, but “Rich Chinese are quite interested,” he said.
“According to the Hurun Report, there are more than 300 US dollar billionaires in China, more than 8,500 yuan billionaires and upwards of 70,000 Chinese hold more than 100 million yuan [US$16.1 million],” he said.
Taiwan is the fifth-most popular place for Chinese millionaires to invest in, after the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, he said.
“Why is it that Taiwan refuses to issue entrepreneurial visas to them and excludes them as potential investor immigrants?” he said. “Instead, we have people from India and Middle East selling sandwich wraps in night markets.”
Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) told Ting that the nation “has a different set of regulations” for people from China.
“We have to abide by the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), and if any changes are to be made to the act, a consensus would be needed in the legislature, which we know is not easy at this stage,” Mao said.
“If that is so, then nothing can be done on the government’s part [in policymaking],” Ting said, adding that leadership means deciding “whether you are to lead, follow or to get out of the way.”
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