The John Tung Foundation (董氏基金會) launched a letter campaign on Tuesday to urge Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻) to disallow British tobacco giant Imperial Tobacco Group PLC’s expansion plans in the county.
Despite opposition from anti-smoking activists, Liu approved Imperial Tobacco’s application to set up a factory in the county’s Guangyuan Technology Park in March this year.
“Now the company is seeking to expand its operations in Taiwan, as its name appears among a list of companies intending to recruit new employees in a technology park in the county’s Houlong Township [後龍鎮],” John Tung Foundation chief executive officer Yao Shi-yuan (姚思遠) said.
The environmental impact assessment for the Houlong technology park project is still pending approval, and the project’s screening panel has called for a reassessment.
Yao said at a news conference he was worried that Imperial Tobacco would expand its domestic presence by setting up a new production line there.
With prices of tobacco products rising as a result of increased taxation, Yao said major cigarette makers have been exploring new markets and producing specialty products targeted at young people.
LOCAL SMOKERS
“If Imperial Tobacco is allowed to open a new factory in Miaoli, more local youths could join the ranks of smokers,” Yao said. “Therefore, we should step up a publicity campaign to prevent the British tobacco company setting up a new plant in Houlong.”
He urged members of the public to download a letter to Liu from the foundation’s “E-Quit Chinese” Web site to express their opposition to Imperial Tobacco’s expansion and to request the commissioner to reject the company’s Houlong project.
The campaign will encourage the Miaoli County Council to fulfill its supervisory mission by voting down the project, Yao said.
ENTICING THE YOUNG
Lee Feng-ao (李鳳翱), honorary chairman of the Consumers’ Foundation, displayed packs of Imperial Tobacco cigarettes sold in Taiwan that feature pop culture images, including street dancing, rock concerts and DJs, which Lee said were meant to entice young smokers.
“The packaging clearly violates the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act [菸害防制法],” Lee said. “Worse still, the company has bundled three packs in a single large package so that young people can purchase more cigarettes in one go.”
Branding Imperial Tobacco’s expansion plan a “Second Opium War,” Huang Sung-li (黃嵩立), secretary-general of the Taiwan International Medical Alliance, said the company’s Taiwanese investment plan would facilitate its global business expansion.
Accusing the Miaoli County Government of nurturing disease and death in Taiwan and Asia while helping Imperial Tobacco make money, Huang said the expansion plan reflected the company’s “imperial mentality.”
ACTOR
Sun Yue (孫越), an actor-turned-activist, said a survey conducted by the Bureau of Health Promotion last year found that 11.41 percent of junior high school students in Miaoli County smoked, a ratio far higher than the national average of 7.79 percent.
“We hope Commissioner Liu will take a cue from these figures and show some guts in opposing Imperial Tobacco’s Houlong plant project,” Sun said.
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控) yesterday launched its second testing facility in San Jose, California, to expand advanced chip testing capacity such as burn-in testing to satisfy customers’ rising engineering needs for emerging semiconductor applications, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). ISE Labs Inc, a fully owned subsidiary of ASE, would operate the advanced testing facility. When added to its first facility in nearby Fremont, ISE would double its available research-and-development lab and business space to 150,000m2 in hopes of boosting the US semiconductor supply chain, the company said in a statement. “As the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain reshoring
VALUE: TSMC’s market capitalization far exceeds the combined size of all the Latin American companies on MSCI Inc’s benchmark for emerging markets Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) US$420 billion equity rally this year would get a valuation test this week when it reports earnings, with analysts expecting the chipmaker to raise full-year sales forecasts. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker would probably report a 29 percent increase in second-quarter net income on Thursday, according to the median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. More importantly, analysts from JPMorgan Chase & Co to Morgan Stanley expect it to also raise its full-year sales guidance, justifying another round of valuation expansion. Just like Nvidia Corp, TSMC has become a favorite artificial intelligence (AI)-bet for investors with
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT: The previous shooting targeting a US president or major party candidate was the 1981 incident targeting then-US president Ronald Reagan Saturday’s shooting at former US president Donald Trump’s election rally raises his odds of winning back the White House, and trades betting on his victory would increase this coming week, investors said yesterday. Trump was shot in the ear during the rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday in what the authorities were treating as an assassination attempt. Trump, his face spattered with blood, pumped his fist moments after the attack, and his campaign said he was fine after the incident. Before the shooting, markets had reacted to the prospect of a Trump presidency by pushing the US dollar higher and positioning for a
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday thanked memory chipmaker Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra for his trust and continued investment in Taiwan, in a rare public meeting with a senior foreign tech executive. It is very unusual for Taiwan’s president to have publicized meetings with senior foreign tech executives, despite the nation being home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), whose chips help to power the surge in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Lai thanked Mehrotra for “showing trust and support for Taiwan” in a video released by the Presidential Office. “I want to thank Micron for its long-term