An unflagging focus on stability, sometimes at the expense of reform, defined Perng Fai-nan’s two decades as head of Taiwan’s Central Bank. In Perng Fai-nan’s two decades of service as Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan) before his retirement in February, the New Taiwan dollar’s value held steady, rarely deviating…
Proponents see big opportunities for Taiwan in this nascent space. Virtual currency fever swept the globe over the past year, peaking when Bitcoin’s value hit US$19,500 in December. Since that zenith, the preeminent cryptocurrency’s value has plummeted to just $10,000, illustrating its extreme volatility. Bitcoin is the best known cryptocurrency, but over a thousand have…
Banks remain cautious about embracing full-throated digitization. Customers of Taiwan’s domestic banks sometimes feel like they’re in a time warp. Basic savings accounts often are not automatically equipped with online banking – customers have to request that service. And in many cases, the standard means of tracking account activity is a passbook that must be…
Taiwan has set admirable goals for cleaning up soil and groundwater pollution. But are overly rigorous standards actually inhibiting site remediation? The CPC Corporation’s massive Kaohsiung refinery complex ceased operations in December 2015 as promised by the state-owned oil company in 1990 (when it was known as the Chinese Petroleum Corp.). Then Premier Hau Pei-tsun…
Taiwan’s government has ambitious goals for dramatically reducing its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in line with global standards. Although Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and did not sign the Paris Accord, Taiwan has nevertheless developed its own plan to dramatically reduce its carbon footprint in…
The Taiwan government is implementing a number of plans aimed at further improving air quality. “When the weather gets cold, the issue of air pollution heats up,” says Tsai Hung-teh, director general of the Environmental Protection Administration’s Department of Air Quality Protection and Noise Control. During the winter months, he notes, the air quality in…
Recently Taiwan Business TOPICS magazine sat down with Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) Minister Lee Ying-yuan to discuss the state of Taiwan’s environmental health. Below is an edited transcript of that conversation, supplemented with written replies from the EPA. What do you consider to be the biggest environmental challenges that Taiwan is currently facing? For…
Few technological advances have gained the world’s attention like the Internet of Things (IoT), defined by global analytics firm IDC as “a network of uniquely identifiable ‘things’ that communicate without human interaction using IP connectivity.” Some 13 billion connected devices are already in operation, used mostly in manufacturing, transportation, smart cities, and consumer applications, and…
The legislature is expected to loosen the current restrictions on media shareholding by government or political entities. BY TIMOTHY FERRY AND DON SHAPIRO The Legislative Yuan is currently considering draft amendments to Taiwan’s three primary media laws that would allow limited investment in electronic media operations by government, political parties, and the military. Current regulations…
Mobile phones are all the rage in Taiwan, with over 29 million devices in use in a society of 23 million people, according to research by Berkshire Hathaway’s Business Wire. That market penetration of 127% compares to what Statista calculates to be just 81% in the United States. Nearly all of Taiwan enjoys 4G network…
