Germany welcomes Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to establish a new fab in Saxony, German Institute Taipei Director-General Jorg Polster said yesterday at a news briefing on the country’s election.
It is the first time the German Institute Taipei has held a briefing on Germany’s parliamentary election, which is “very important,” said Polster, who spoke in German with a Chinese interpreter.
Over the past few months, Germany’s electorate seemed to have undergone some changes regarding their choices, with the margins between the Social Democratic Party and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its smaller sister party the Christian Social Union in Bavaria being close, he said, adding that the Green Party was expected to garner more votes.
Photo: CNA
More observation is needed before knowing how the new German government would approach its relations with Taiwan and China, he said.
Germany last year launched an Indo-Pacific strategy, including a plan to send a patrol vessel to the South China Sea, Polster said.
How the new government would approach the Indo-Pacific strategy would also need more observation, he added.
German lawmakers’ understanding of Taiwan is mainly focused on the security of the Taiwan Strait and Taiwan’s success in curbing the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.
Lawmakers would certainly be interested in forming a delegation to visit Taiwan, but how to make that happen during the pandemic would need to be deliberated after the new government is formed, he said, adding that he hopes to arrange a visit together with the Taipei Representative Office in the Federal Republic of Germany.
In July, TSMC said it was evaluating the feasibility of constructing a semiconductor fabrication plant in Germany.
Berlin welcomes the firm’s establishment plan, Polster said, adding that the east German state of Saxony would be a suitable location.
Polster, who succeeded former institute director-general Thomas Prinz in July, said he has met with Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) and Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮).
While he has not yet met with TSMC’s leaders, as a physicist, he would like to learn more about the company’s plans for the new fab, as well as other developments, he said.
Germany and Taiwan have many small and medium-sized enterprises, so he hopes to learn more about their operations in Taiwan, Polster said, adding that he is interested in visiting Taiwan’s science parks.
Other areas for ongoing cooperation include energy, culture, aviation and judicial exchanges, he said.
Taiwan and Germany regularly hold energy forums, with offshore wind energy being a sector of common interest, he said.
Considering there are many similarities between Taiwan’s judiciary system and Germany’s, he would also like to have more bilateral exchanges on legal institutions and judges, he said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching