Terry Gou says finance policy 'out of touch' (Taiwan)

China Post ^ | 06/27/2013 | Kathryn Chiu

[TexGrill]

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Tycoon Terry Gou yesterday said that Taiwan's finance policies enacted in the last decade are extremely out of touch, describing those finance ministers with diplomas from “fancy U.S. business schools” as living on another planet.

Gou, the chairman of Hon Hai Precision, the world's largest contract electronics maker, was speaking at the company's annual general shareholders' meeting.

Asked after the meeting about the annulment of the stock gains tax from transactions, Gou gave some candid comments about the financial policies promulgated by Taiwan over the past decade, ranging from earlier stock bonus taxes to the recent stock gains tax.

He called the stock gains tax “a theater of absurdity,” saying that “the government knew in the first place that (the tax) was not going to work.”

[TexGrill]

Global business tip

[jobim]

A story from the China Post - that's a first.

I was the lone foreigner on the China Post in the late 1970s.
I'd go in each night about 9pm, and all the day's stories written
by local Chinese were stacked up on my desk. I proofed them, and wrote headlines.

Stories came in from around the world via the old Telexmachine,
which was kept in a room under lock and key, and only the editor
and publisher had access. You see, all news was tightly controlled in Taiwan then.
Time Magazine had blackened-out areas, areas cut with a scissors, by hand,
in the main bookstores on Chung Shan Bei Lou.

These were the times when the Kuomintang and the Taiwan Independence movement
were battling, and there were many political prisoners. And living in Taiwan
then was like living through the Industrial Revolution.

Exciting times on that beautiful island!