Justin Dunkle didn’t intend to follow in the footsteps of his father, Joseph Dunkle, a former military police officer from New York who founded Aunt Stella’s Cookies and Cakes in Japan in 1983. The younger Dunkle, raised in Japan and educated in Canada and Japan, instead originally chose a career in investment banking. The fallout…
Not long after coming to Taiwan to study Chinese, Brett Aaron started to dabble in business – opening the market here for Snapple beverages – as a way to help hone his language skills. Now, some three decades later, he is still based in Taipei, and the company he founded in 1994, BABI International Corp.,…
Michelin Guide Comes to Taipei The Michelin Co. formally launched its Michelin Guide Taipei on March 14, awarding stars to 20 restaurants. Only one, the Cantonese restaurant Le Palais in the Palais de Chine Hotel, received the coveted three-stars rating, signifying “exceptional cuisine worth a journey,” according to the Michelin standard. Two restaurants – Japanese…
Google Invests in Taiwan AI Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., announced March 31 that it would be making extensive investments into Taiwan’s artificial intelligence (AI) development. The company said it would hire at least 300 AI engineers, cultivate 5,000 talent positions, and train more than 50,000 digital marketing personnel in a year. AI-engineering positions will…
There is more to Taiwan than just Taiwan – meaning the country consists of more than the main island on which over 99% of its citizens live. In addition to the Kinmen and Matsu archipelagos (which are far closer to the Chinese mainland than to Taipei), the windswept Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait, and…
Most member companies of the Chamber are optimistic about Taiwan’s economy and their own profitability over the next three years, but business leaders have serious concerns about energy, the labor law and the way regulations are made. Those were the major findings of the 2018 Business Climate Survey, conducted for AmCham by PwC Taiwan. The…
We noticed something different in the recently completed 2018 AmCham Taipei Business Climate Survey, summarized in this issue of TOPICS. There’s a sense that progress is beginning to be made in many problem areas. To be sure, the survey respondents had plenty of concerns. These include the treatment of professional and managerial personnel under current…
More than 99% of Taiwan’s people live on an island that is often likened to a tobacco leaf in terms of shape, and frequently described as a biodiversity hotspot of global significance. The island of Taiwan also has the lion’s share of the country’s land area, but this does not mean visitors should skip the minor…
The Taiwan government is encouraging the country’s insurance companies to tap into their NT$23 trillion (US$767 billion) in insurance funds to help support national infrastructure and development projects. At the top of the list is the green energy portion of the government’s “5+2” key innovative industry program. With the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) committed…
Revitalizing the creative industries could raise Taiwan’s global profile and boost the economy. In late 2001, Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hisen’s new film Millennium Mambo opened in Paris cinemas with great fanfare. MK2, one of France’s top independent film companies, showed the film in its Paris theaters alongside big Hollywood productions such as David Lynch’s Mulholland…
