China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), the nation’s largest carrier, will add two more Chinese cities to its destination list in September at the earliest, the airline said yesterday.
CAL will serve Yancheng in Jiangsu Province and Sanya in Hainan Province with two scheduled flights to each city, the airline said.
Meanwhile, EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), the second-largest carrier in the nation, said it is still working on a service expansion to Yancheng and it intends to have one direct flight to the city each week.
Yancheng is adjacent to Shanghai and can make up for the shortage of services to Shanghai, where demand exceeds supply, CAL said. However, the new flights will not be able to rely solely on Taiwanese businesspeople traveling across the Strait and the company will have to attract more Chinese tourists from these cities to Taiwan, the airline said.
The latest addition of new destinations is part of a cross-strait agreement signed on June 8 to increase the number of direct flights between Taiwan and China from 370 to 558 per week, with each side being given an extra 94 flights. The additional flights will not be able to start before the end of October, Civil Aeronautics Administration Director-General Ying Chen-pong (尹承蓬) said on July 13.
As of the end of last year, Yancheng had approved 748 investment cases from Taiwanese companies and had more than 700 Taiwanese businesses registered in the city. There are more than 100,000 Taiwanese people living in Yancheng, while more than 30,000 Yancheng residents visited Taiwan in tour groups last year.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said that its research institute has launched its first advanced artificial intelligence (AI) large language model (LLM) using traditional Chinese, with technology assistance from Nvidia Corp. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), said the LLM, FoxBrain, is expected to improve its data analysis capabilities for smart manufacturing, and electric vehicle and smart city development. An LLM is a type of AI trained on vast amounts of text data and uses deep learning techniques, particularly neural networks, to process and generate language. They are essential for building and improving AI-powered servers. Nvidia provided assistance
DOMESTIC SUPPLY: The probe comes as Donald Trump has called for the repeal of the US$52.7 billion CHIPS and Science Act, which the US Congress passed in 2022 The Office of the US Trade Representative is to hold a hearing tomorrow into older Chinese-made “legacy” semiconductors that could heap more US tariffs on chips from China that power everyday goods from cars to washing machines to telecoms equipment. The probe, which began during former US president Joe Biden’s tenure in December last year, aims to protect US and other semiconductor producers from China’s massive state-driven buildup of domestic chip supply. A 50 percent US tariff on Chinese semiconductors began on Jan. 1. Legacy chips use older manufacturing processes introduced more than a decade ago and are often far simpler than
STILL HOPEFUL: Delayed payment of NT$5.35 billion from an Indian server client sent its earnings plunging last year, but the firm expects a gradual pickup ahead Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), the world’s No. 5 PC vendor, yesterday reported an 87 percent slump in net profit for last year, dragged by a massive overdue payment from an Indian cloud service provider. The Indian customer has delayed payment totaling NT$5.35 billion (US$162.7 million), Asustek chief financial officer Nick Wu (吳長榮) told an online earnings conference. Asustek shipped servers to India between April and June last year. The customer told Asustek that it is launching multiple fundraising projects and expected to repay the debt in the short term, Wu said. The Indian customer accounted for less than 10 percent to Asustek’s
Gasoline and diesel prices this week are to decrease NT$0.5 and NT$1 per liter respectively as international crude prices continued to fall last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to decrease to NT$29.2, NT$30.7 and NT$32.7 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, while premium diesel is to cost NT$27.9 per liter at CPC stations and NT$27.7 at Formosa pumps, the companies said in separate statements. Global crude oil prices dropped last week after the eight OPEC+ members said they would
RSS