On February 11, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Susan Thornton testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. As her report provides a clear appraisal of the current state of U.S.-Taiwan relations, TOPICS reprints her remarks below for readers’ reference. Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee for…
In appreciation for his longstanding participation in AmCham Taipei, the Chamber’s Board of Governors has voted to present E.F. (Ephraim Ferdinand) Einhorn with a Lifetime Honorary Membership. Einhorn, who refers to himself as “97 years young,” is a man of a rare combination of talents, including businessman, scholar, rabbi, linguist, and practitioner of private diplomacy….
Major advances have taken place in the sector in just the past few decades. The opening of the National Palace Museum Southern Branch in December last year brought President Ma Ying-jeou and a host of other dignitaries to Taiwan’s southwestern city of Chiayi, in a celebration of Asian culture. Aboriginal singers and a dragon dance…
One is high culture, the other grassroots. But the architecture of both Kris Yao and Huang Sheng-yuan represents the emergence of an original Taiwan sensibility. Kris Yao Artech “One thing that is very important in architecture is locality. The design of any piece of architecture can only stand on one certain spot on the…
The victory of the Democratic Progressive Party’s Tsai Ing-wen in mid-January’s presidential election was no surprise; she had been leading in opinion polls for months. More unexpected was the scale of the triumph – and that of the DPP candidates in the legislative contests. Not only did Tsai win 56.1% of the vote in a…
Green civic organizations are making next January’s legislative elections their next battlefield. Taiwan’s environmental movement is entering a new phase of more direct political activism. On September 21, the Green Party-Social Democratic Party (SDP) Alliance announced that it would field six candidates in next January’s legislative elections, including Green Party Taiwan co-convener Lee Ken-cheng. The…
The Taiwan insurance sector’s long-term sustainability – and its ability to maintain the confidence of the public whose financial welfare it serves – depends on the degree of discipline exercised by both insurers and regulators in ensuring proper risk management. That discipline has already been tested several times in recent years when domestic life insurance…
Innovation is a popular topic in Taiwan these days, recognized as an essential ingredient for this economy’s future development and prosperity. Yet in one crucial market – “non-life” insurance products aimed at protecting consumers and businesses from damage, loss, and liability – innovation has often been stifled by overly rigid regulations. Insurers are required to…
One of the recent issues of concern to the AmCham Taipei Insurance Committee, as discussed in Suggestion 2 of the 2015 Taiwan White Paper, has been the increase in the business tax for financial institutions that took effect in July 2014, raising the rate from 2% to 5%. For insurance companies, the tax is levied…
Formerly, people’s lives seemed to fit neatly into broad demographic categories: the first age of childhood, the productive years of the second age of working life, and the third age of retirement. But as an increasingly large segment of the population approaches retirement age, the question arises of whether enough resources will be available to…
