The Chinese government on Friday unveiled 11 measures to help Taiwanese businesses operating in China combat COVID-19 and resume production.
The move came ahead of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) inauguration on Wednesday and on the heels of Beijing’s announcement on Thursday that it would begin a two-and-a-half-month live-fire military drill in the Bohai Sea.
Beijing rolled out 31 measures ahead of Taiwan’s local elections in 2018, and another 26 prior to the presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 11.
Chinese authorities have described them as “incentives.”
Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency reported that the latest measures were listed in a document printed and shared among 10 agencies, including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Taiwan Affairs Office.
The measures are aimed at helping Taiwanese businesses resume operations and production after COVID-19 shutdowns, extend their reach in the Chinese market, and benefit from tax deductions and exemption policies.
China also promises to provide businesses with land for their operations, as long as the space requested is reasonable, and to increase subsidies to help them prevent COVID-19.
The measures read more like policy statements than feasible plans, the Mainland Affairs Council said, calling on China to understand the challenges facing Taiwanese firms wanting to stay safe amid the pandemic and resume production rather than pay lip service or be used to boost China’s own development.
In response to the economic effects of COVID-19, most Taiwanese firms have been stepping up efforts to relocate production to mitigate risks, the council said, adding that the government would continue to offer businesses benefits to redirect their investments to the nation or repatriate the profits they made in China.
The government would continue to follow the COVID-19 situation in China and assist Taiwanese firms there, it said.
Beijing’s intention behind the measures is to convince businesses that China’s economy has remained robust, thus curbing an exodus of Taiwanese firms, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
Since Chinese factories have resumed operations, the number of orders they have received from overseas has slumped, which has hurt its economy and contributed to its first-ever negative GDP figure, at minus-6.8 percent for the first quarter, the source said.
Beijing clinging to Taiwanese firms highlights its flagging economy, the source added.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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