France is focusing on enhancing economic cooperation with Taiwan, particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI) and energy, French Office in Taipei Director Franck Paris said on Friday evening.
Cooperation with Taiwan in AI and energy would be a “priority” as France seeks to strengthen bilateral economic ties, Paris said at a Bastille Day celebration event in Taipei.
The French office is actively working to facilitate exchanges between start-ups and universities from the two sides, Paris said, without going into detail.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
“We stand alongside Taiwan to achieve [its] ambition to become the leading AI island,” he said, alluding to President William Lai’s (賴清德) policy pledge to support the development of the AI industry in Taiwan.
Friday’s celebration, heavily focused on the upcoming Paris Olympics, was attended by many government officials, including Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) and National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮).
In his remarks, Lin lauded the “strong parliamentary support for Taiwan” in France, adding that the number of members in the French Senate’s Taiwan Friendship Group has increased from about 20 in July 2018 to 63.
The minister added that he looks forward to further collaborations between the two sides on semiconductors, renewable energy and AI under a scientific cooperation deal, referring to the Science and Technology Cooperation Convention signed between the two nations last November.
The French Office in Taipei represents France’s interests in Taiwan in the absence of official diplomatic ties.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was wooing leaders from across Africa with a banquet on Wednesday night, King Mswati III of Eswatini was notably absent. That is because the kingdom — about the size of New Jersey and with just 1.2 million people — is one of Taiwan’s remaining dozen diplomatic allies. That means Eswatini does not participate in Xi’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the centerpiece of China’s diplomatic outreach to Africa, which was held in Beijing this week. The landlocked nation, which sits between Mozambique and South Africa, is the last holdout in Beijing’s seven-plus decade mission to make Africa