SG Talk

Sometimes I wonder, what is the use of having formal official diplomatic ties with such small island nation? With low economical values. Not much benefits to the Taiwanese. 

Instead of provocating China by having many official relations with countries. 

Why don't Taiwan focus on spreading her bilateral trades with major economical regions and countries. 
Open up her markets and and let in MNC investment from all over the world. 

Internationally trading bilateral relationship does not goes against the "One China" policy, that is adopted by most countries. 
At the same time, it creates strong friendship, bonding with crucial sustainability factors needed by both sides.
Improve Taiwanese economy and standard of living. 
Internationalise Taiwan branding in the world. Increase her relevance in the world.

Next?
More to come

(15-01-2024, 07:23 PM)moonrab Wrote: [ -> ]Sometimes I wonder, what is the use of having formal official diplomatic ties with such small island nation? With low economical values. Not much benefits to the Taiwanese. 

Instead of provocating China by having many official relations with countries. 

Why don't Taiwan focus on spreading her bilateral trades with major economical regions and countries. 
Open up her markets and and let in MNC investment from all over the world. 

Internationally trading bilateral relationship does not goes against the "One China" policy, that is adopted by most countries. 
At the same time, it creates strong friendship, bonding with crucial sustainability factors needed by both sides.
Improve Taiwanese economy and standard of living. 
Internationalise Taiwan branding in the world. Increase her relevance in the world.

this nauru is the 3rd smallest country w population <500k
waste of time n money to hv diplomatic relation w such a v 
v small country

it is timed to announce after taiwan successful election

Wise move. 👏

(15-01-2024, 07:26 PM)Migrant Wrote: [ -> ]Next?
More to come

One less for Taiwamese folks...and for DPP as a govt....

(15-01-2024, 07:23 PM)moonrab Wrote: [ -> ]Sometimes I wonder, what is the use of having formal official diplomatic ties with such small island nation? With low economical values. Not much benefits to the Taiwanese. 

Instead of provocating China by having many official relations with countries. 

Why don't Taiwan focus on spreading her bilateral trades with major economical regions and countries. 
Open up her markets and and let in MNC investment from all over the world. 

Internationally trading bilateral relationship does not goes against the "One China" policy, that is adopted by most countries. 
At the same time, it creates strong friendship, bonding with crucial sustainability factors needed by both sides.
Improve Taiwanese economy and standard of living. 
Internationalise Taiwan branding in the world. Increase her relevance in the world.

They have been doing that since 1949 and reached economic pinnacle in the early 1990s.

Nowadays Taiwanese industries have largely lost global economic relevance and are now left with only semicon (really just TSMC and its supply chain) and a variety of FMCG and lower end tech manufacturing companies that are very dependent on the mainland Chinese market. Now even the semicon industry is under threat as both the US and China are determined to reduce reliance on Taiwanese semiconductors.

It's not that the Taiwanese do not want to increase relevance by trading, rather that they have lost their competitive edge and can no longer offer much to "trade with the world".

As for letting in MNCs investment, they have always been doing that. The problem is they do not have much of an appeal to MNCs - for RHQs it makes more sense for them to come over to Singapore or Hong Kong due to our superior infrastructure, manpower, legal and financial services. 

In terms of end market growth potential, mainland China and ASEAN is where the action is as Taiwan is largely a stagnant and mature market. From a cost perspective, Taiwan offers some advantage in terms of labour quality, but most of the time it's not enough to justify the much higher wages compared to ASEAN or China hinterland.

Taiwart already 14yrs deep in economic shite ..... now stupiak taiwartness vote for Dumb People Partee ..... Taiwart will be in even more deeper shite
What Taiwart has to offer?

(15-01-2024, 07:38 PM)talky Wrote: [ -> ]this nauru is the 3rd smallest country w population <500k
waste of time n money to hv diplomatic relation w such a v 
v small country it is timed to announce after taiwan successful election

The Taiwan Province gov had lost over 50% of the states which it had diplomatic relation since the start of 21st century.
Obviously, it is not a matter of size nor population of the countries that had severe ties with Taipei, but rather the accelerating trend of falling support and recognition by  UN members - regardless of how US gov tried (in vein) to shore up international support for the gov on the Island ....

Ultimately, the outcome we already know - "One China" really meant in blood and words regardless of KMT, DPP or whoever gets elected to be "president" of a Chinese province...

(16-01-2024, 11:14 AM)maxsanic Wrote: [ -> ]They have been doing that since 1949 and reached economic pinnacle in the early 1990s.

Nowadays Taiwanese industries have largely lost global economic relevance and are now left with only semicon (really just TSMC and its supply chain) and a variety of FMCG and lower end tech manufacturing companies that are very dependent on the mainland Chinese market. Now even the semicon industry is under threat as both the US and China are determined to reduce reliance on Taiwanese semiconductors.

It's not that the Taiwanese do not want to increase relevance by trading, rather that they have lost their competitive edge and can no longer offer much to "trade with the world".

As for letting in MNCs investment, they have always been doing that. The problem is they do not have much of an appeal to MNCs - for RHQs it makes more sense for them to come over to Singapore or Hong Kong due to our superior infrastructure, manpower, legal and financial services. 

In terms of end market growth potential, mainland China and ASEAN is where the action is as Taiwan is largely a stagnant and mature market. From a cost perspective, Taiwan offers some advantage in terms of labour quality, but most of the time it's not enough to justify the much higher wages compared to ASEAN or China hinterland.

Taiwanese market is the most protected ones in market. 

Due to their heavy political system of vying for votes and power. 
The local big bosses pulling strings with most politicians, for implementing self beneficiary in the foreign trade policies with most countries.
Protecting their own rice bowl. And their own clans power. 
In return, guaranteed votes for like minded political party.

With their official estimate for Taiwan's GDP was $1.293 trillion at the end of 2023 in puchasing power partity terms.

It is a wonder why they cannot improve their infrastructure structure to the likes of S Korea, etc...
With a population of 23 millions, it should be attractive for MNC to build factories, Data centres, with cheaper operations as compared to the West.

Taiwan's economic bureaucracy played a large role in the development and implementation of policies that affects FDI.
The focus of growing their own local manufacturers base undercut foreign MNC development. In which heavily undermined their relevance to the world over the decades. 

With Taiwanese's Demography, Size, GDP, Education level, Industrial skill. 
They should be way ahead of today's trades, economic, chain supply, technological transfer connectivity with the world. West and Asian.

(15-01-2024, 07:38 PM)talky Wrote: [ -> ]this nauru is the 3rd smallest country w population <500k
waste of time n money to hv diplomatic relation w such a v 
v small country

it is timed to announce after taiwan successful election

Although it is small it is strategically important in South Pacific for China to break the U.S. and Australian influence there.

(16-01-2024, 09:43 AM)Tee tiong huat Wrote: [ -> ]One less for Taiwamese folks...and for DPP as a govt....

Taiwan has only 12 countries left, most of them are tiny little island nations.

(16-01-2024, 01:59 PM)moonrab Wrote: [ -> ]Taiwanese market is the most protected ones in market. 

Due to their heavy political system of vying for votes and power. 
The local big bosses pulling strings with most politicians, for implementing self beneficiary in the foreign trade policies with most countries.
Protecting their own rice bowl. And their own clans power. 
In return, guaranteed votes for like minded political party.

With their official estimate for Taiwan's GDP was $1.293 trillion at the end of 2023 in puchasing power partity terms.

It is a wonder why they cannot improve their infrastructure structure to the likes of S Korea, etc...
With a population of 23 millions, it should be attractive for MNC to build factories, Data centres, with cheaper operations as compared to the West.

Taiwan's economic bureaucracy played a large role in the development and implementation of policies that affects FDI.
The focus of growing their own local manufacturers base undercut foreign MNC development. In which heavily undermined their relevance to the world over the decades. 

With Taiwanese's Demography, Size, GDP, Education level, Industrial skill. 
They should be way ahead of today's trades, economic, chain supply, technological transfer connectivity with the world. West and Asian.

Taiwan’s education standard sucks, can you believe there are nearly 200 so called universities in such a small island with 25 million of people? What the government did was to convert many low quality colleges into universities so that everyone can get a degree, as a result many universities can’t survive due to shortage of students, a few of them closed down in the past few months. Despite that Taiwan has so many universities, only one of them made to the top 300 in the world, that is National University of Taiwan, far behind our NUS and NTU that are ranked in top 80, Beijing University, Qinghua University, Hong Kong University, Tokyo University or so that are ranked in top 150.

Taiwan’s economy is highly dependent on China, more than 50% of exports go to China. Under ECFA free trade agreement with China Taiwan has made USD 100 billion surplus per year for the past 12 years while Taiwan has trade deficit with Japan about USD 50 billion per year. Offset the loss with Japan from the gain from China, Taiwan literally has USD 50 billion surplus per year to keep its GDP grow. However under ECFA while China allows 4000 Taiwan’s produces enter China free of tariffs Taiwan blocks Chinese products entering Taiwan for political reasons. China has completed trade barriers investigation and will bring the case to WTO to accuse Taiwan of violating free trade. On the other hand China is going to terminate ECFA that contributes a great deal to Taiwan’s economy. When that happens, Taiwan’s GDP will go negative, some companies will close down and millions could be out of job.

Currently there are 600k Taiwanese doing business, working, studying and living in China.

(16-01-2024, 03:08 PM)lvlrsSTI Wrote: [ -> ]Taiwan’s education standard sucks, can you believe there are nearly 200 so called universities in such a small island with 25 million of people? What the government did was to convert many low quality colleges into universities so that everyone can get a degree, as a result many universities can’t survive due to shortage of students, a few of them closed down in the past few months. Despite that Taiwan has so many universities, only one of them made to the top 300 in the world, that is National University of Taiwan, far behind our NUS and NTU that are ranked in top 80, Beijing University, Qinghua University, Hong Kong University, Tokyo University or so that are ranked in top 150.

Taiwan’s economy is highly dependent on China, more than 50% of exports go to China. Under ECFA free trade agreement with China Taiwan has made USD 100 billion surplus per year for the past 12 years while Taiwan has trade deficit with Japan about USD 50 billion per year. Offset the loss with Japan from the gain from China, Taiwan literally has USD 50 billion surplus per year to keep its GDP grow. However under ECFA while China allows 4000 Taiwan’s produces enter China free of tariffs Taiwan blocks Chinese products enter Taiwan for political reasons. China has completed trade barriers investigation and will bring the case to WTO to accuse Taiwan for violating free trade. On the other hand China is going to terminate ECFA that contributes a great deal to Taiwan’s economy. When that happens, Taiwan’s GDP will go negative, some companies will close down and millions could be out of job.

Yep.
Taiwanese local companies are well known in tapping into China's booming market for profiteering. 
Partnering with West MNC, venture into China huge land, water and human labour resources and market. 

At the same time collude with their govt bureaucracy to protect Taiwanese local market.

Hosay liao can have naval base for China huat arh huat arh huat huat arh
https://media.tenor.com/Tii3MhKr9voAAAAM...apping.gif

(16-01-2024, 01:59 PM)moonrab Wrote: [ -> ]Taiwanese market is the most protected ones in market. 

Due to their heavy political system of vying for votes and power. 
The local big bosses pulling strings with most politicians, for implementing self beneficiary in the foreign trade policies with most countries.
Protecting their own rice bowl. And their own clans power. 
In return, guaranteed votes for like minded political party.

With their official estimate for Taiwan's GDP was $1.293 trillion at the end of 2023 in puchasing power partity terms.

It is a wonder why they cannot improve their infrastructure structure to the likes of S Korea, etc...
With a population of 23 millions, it should be attractive for MNC to build factories, Data centres, with cheaper operations as compared to the West.

Taiwan's economic bureaucracy played a large role in the development and implementation of policies that affects FDI.
The focus of growing their own local manufacturers base undercut foreign MNC development. In which heavily undermined their relevance to the world over the decades. 

With Taiwanese's Demography, Size, GDP, Education level, Industrial skill. 
They should be way ahead of today's trades, economic, chain supply, technological transfer connectivity with the world. West and Asian.

If we just look at Taiwan alone, it ain't that bad. While their infrastructure, political climate and labor force is not first world, there are plenty of countries doing worse than them as well.

Even though Taiwan is cheaper than most developed western countries, the issues with them with regards to MNC investments are two fold:

1) Competition is too strong. For higher value add activities, mainland China boasts a humongous and still growing market, superior infrastructure such as roads, rail, power, water etc. Taiwan simply cannot match. For e.g. you mentioned DCs, but with the ongoing power shortages running there, this is simply not feasible. 

For lower value add activities, MNCs have ASEAN countries to choose from. While they may not be as good as Taiwan in some aspects, they have 2 critical advantages - lower cost and a growing + bigger end market. Taiwan may have a better educated workforce compared to Indonesia / Thailand / Vietnam, but proximity to the mega ASEAN market plus cheaper labour and real estate cost more than offsets whatever marginal competitive advantage Taiwan can offer.

2) Taiwan's domestic market is simply too small. Population too small, spending power has stagnated for many years, infrastructure is neither here nor there (say good not very good like first world, say bad also not that bad like third world), GDP growth exhibiting classic well developed mature market characteristics despite per capita income being significantly lower.

Taiwan is a classic example of an economy that got bottle necked and failed to fully transit to high end. They cannot compete on either cost for lower end economic activities or on technology / productivity for higher end ones. All that is left now is TSMC plus its dependent supply chain vendors, everyone in Taiwan knows the problem but unfortunately nobody can do anything as the poltiicians and bureaucrats are busy either attacking each other on national identity issues and/or engaging in various petty scandalous mudslinging.

Taiwanese can only delude themselves now that TSMC is a 护国神山 or that bubble tea is some sort of global cultural export. Comical and sad at the same time.

(16-01-2024, 03:08 PM)lvlrsSTI Wrote: [ -> ]Taiwan’s education standard sucks, can you believe there are nearly 200 so called universities in such a small island with 25 million of people? What the government did was to convert many low quality colleges into universities so that everyone can get a degree, as a result many universities can’t survive due to shortage of students, a few of them closed down in the past few months. Despite that Taiwan has so many universities, only one of them made to the top 300 in the world, that is National University of Taiwan, far behind our NUS and NTU that are ranked in top 80, Beijing University, Qinghua University, Hong Kong University, Tokyo University or so that are ranked in top 150.

Taiwan’s economy is highly dependent on China, more than 50% of exports go to China. Under ECFA free trade agreement with China Taiwan has made USD 100 billion surplus per year for the past 12 years while Taiwan has trade deficit with Japan about USD 50 billion per year. Offset the loss with Japan from the gain from China, Taiwan literally has USD 50 billion surplus per year to keep its GDP grow. However under ECFA while China allows 4000 Taiwan’s produces enter China free of tariffs Taiwan blocks Chinese products entering Taiwan for political reasons. China has completed trade barriers investigation and will bring the case to WTO to accuse Taiwan of violating free trade. On the other hand China is going to terminate ECFA that contributes a great deal to Taiwan’s economy. When that happens, Taiwan’s GDP will go negative, some companies will close down and millions could be out of job.

Currently there are 600k Taiwanese doing business, working, studying and living in China.

Yep, Taiwan education while better than most third world countries, is actually quite lacking as well. Their lack of English proficiency (much worse than HK) amongst the general populace doesn't help either.

My Taiwanese friends told me that in Taiwan only three educational institutions are considered "universities" by first world standards, the rest are simply degree mills that are worse than vocational schools. Vocational schools at least teach useful technical skills, garbage degree mills are of no utility and confer general knowledge that is hard to port over to the actual job market. 

Suffice to say, three universities is definitely not enough for a 23 million population, not to mention these three aren't exactly world class standards either. A classic example of bureaucrats rushing to meet misguided KPIs that eventually had a devastating impact on the population over the long term.

(16-01-2024, 03:46 PM)maxsanic Wrote: [ -> ]Yep, Taiwan education while better than most third world countries, is actually quite lacking as well. Their lack of English proficiency (much worse than HK) amongst the general populace doesn't help either.

My Taiwanese friends told me that in Taiwan only three educational institutions are considered "universities" by first world standards, the rest are simply degree mills that are worse than vocational schools. Vocational schools at least teach useful technical skills, garbage degree mills are of no utility and confer general knowledge that is hard to port over to the actual job market. 

Suffice to say, three universities is definitely not enough for a 23 million population, not to mention these three aren't exactly world class standards either. A classic example of bureaucrats rushing to meet misguided KPIs that eventually had a devastating impact on the population over the long term.

That is why Spore and many countries dunt recognise their degrees…you will be amazed to know more than 50% of Taiwanese are holding Masters and PhDs, other than small number of them are from top universities in the U.S. and Britain most of them are from local universities…in recent scandals some politicians got masters degrees without attending classes

(16-01-2024, 04:55 PM)lvlrsSTI Wrote: [ -> ]That is why Spore and many countries dunt recognise their degrees…you will be amazed to know more than 50% of Taiwanese are holding Masters and PhDs, other than small number of them are from top universities in the U.S. and Britain most of them are from local universities…in recent scandals some politicians got masters degrees without attending classes

Unsurprising, that is the very definition of degree mills.

I reckon the really good ones are all either in US, China or Europe. My ex-company used to have a number of Taiwanese management trainees from good universities as well. These high potentials were all subsequently deployed for long term overseas assignments in Europe, mainland China or Singapore where there are opportunities for professional development.

The Taiwan office only deals with sales & marketing within Taiwan itself and has a country director, 2-3 managers and a dozen or so junior staff. There was simply no prospect of advancement if they had chosen to stay and not relocate.

(15-01-2024, 05:40 PM)lvlrsSTI Wrote: [ -> ]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-67978185

Later they will regret lah!

(16-01-2024, 07:29 PM)cheekopekman Wrote: [ -> ]Later they will regret lah!

No regrets lar can park warship make your daddies jjww LMAO 
https://media.tenor.com/LoZlpBdGi2AAAAAM...on-man.gif

(16-01-2024, 07:29 PM)cheekopekman Wrote: [ -> ]Later they will regret lah!

So many countries have done it. 

How many of them regret leh?

. 
.

(16-01-2024, 07:56 PM)cityhantam Wrote: [ -> ]So many countries have done it. 

How many of them regret leh?

They all will regret lah!