Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Heavy investment in China by Taiwanese businesspeople will have many negative effects on Taiwan in the long run. I will limit my discussion to just two.

First, large amounts of investment in China by Taiwanese means that less money is invested in Taiwan, and this slows down the rate of domestic industrial upgrade. Since the majority of Taiwanese businesspeople can use their existing technologies to manufacture products in China, they have no need to conduct research and development or to invest in Taiwan, nor do they face any immediate pressure to improve the quality of their business operations, which means industrial upgrades here have slowed and will continue to do so.

Vaccination is the best way to protect against influenza. The government, with vaccines sourced from home and abroad, launched an inoculation program on Nov. 1 for those considered at high risk of contracting A(H1N1), or swine flu. It subsequently launched a nationwide immunization program on Dec. 12, hoping to shield the population against the global epidemic.

Despite the government’s all-out campaign, and despite incentives such as cabbage, towels and stationery offered at some locations, the inoculation rate remains short of the targeted 30 percent of the population. Department of Health Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) said the inoculation rate was around 20 percent as of Tuesday.