Taiwan investment ‘purely commercial’
Print Edition
A CHINESE mainland company’s 17.3 billion yuan (US$2.7 billion) investment in Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is purely commercial and should not be politicized, a mainland official said yesterday.
Unigroup, controlled by Beijing’s Tsinghua University, is buying stakes in three Taiwanese chip giants in an effort to achieve top chipmaker status.
However, the purchase has proved controversial on the island with some politicians claiming it is a “threat to Taiwan industry” and a “mainland conspiracy.”
At a press conference, State Council Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Ma Xiaoguang said voluntary cooperation between companies on both sides was mutually beneficial and would help the island’s economy.
“It’s not one side eating the other, nor is it one side buying or controlling the other,” he said.
Cooperation had brought Taiwan a huge trade surplus, and the mainland had been the most important economic hinterland for maintaining Taiwan’s GDP growth and its industrial upgrades, he said.
While Taiwan had restrictions on mainland investment, the mainland had further opened its market to the island, he said, adding that the mainland welcomed a plan by Taiwan-based TSMC, a world-leading semiconductor foundry, to build factories on the mainland, enabling Taiwan companies to share development opportunities.
Ma announced eased restrictions for Taiwanese to do business on the mainland, expanding another 24 sectors, including advertising, packaging and clothing, to individual Taiwanese entrepreneurs.
Previously Taiwanese businesspeople were only allowed to explore retail and catering opportunities on the mainland.
The number of regions open to Taiwanese business ventures has also been increased from nine to all areas in the mainland, excluding Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Gansu. Restrictions on the number of employees and maximum business floor area have also been lifted, Ma said.
He added that he believed these new policies would benefit more ordinary people in Taiwan, especially those who are open to exploring opportunities on the economically strong mainland.
The Chinese mainland has welcomed Taiwanese individual business since the end of 2011, in a bid to “let the Taiwan people be the first to share mainland’s development opportunities,” he said.
So far more than 3,500 Taiwanese have registered as individual businesses on the mainland, with many already well established, Ma said.
Last week, the Ministry of Commerce announced that the mainland had approved 2,288 projects with Taiwanese investment in the first 10 months of the year, a 20.9 percent increase on the year before.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
