Banking, Capital Markets, Economics, Taiwan - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 13:22 - 0 Comments

Is the honeymoon over for Taiwan-China trade?

Institutional Investor, June 2010

Ever since Ma Ying-jeou became President of Taiwan in May 2008 on a platform of warmer relations with mainland China, the island state’s businesses have been enthusing about the benefits that should flow to them from this new cooperative spirit.

The logic is straightforward. Closer ties mean greater ease of access, which is good for tourism and transportation, and should lead to more business in general. In particular, the lifting of long-standing restrictions on investment in mainland China is not only good for Taiwanese investors and entrepreneurs, but ought to galvanise the financial services sector too as banks follows their clients in to new opportunities.

But two years on, much the same language – of promise, of opportunity, of the future – is being used as it was when Ma came to power. “We are on the verge of a major transformation,” says Victor Kung, President of Fubon Financial, but it feels like Taiwan has been on that verge for some time. Continue…

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