In this week’s installment of Looking South, Eric Gau speaks with Director-General Tristan Lyu of the Taichung Economic Development Bureau about the central city’s efforts to reach out to New Southbound Policy target countries.Listen here
Transcript:
Eric Gau: Good morning. I’m Eric Gau, and welcome to this week’s installment of Looking South on ICRT. In this program, we explore the effects of the central government’s New Southbound Policy. Today, we are joined by Director-General Tristan Lyu of the Taichung Economic Development Bureau, to share with us his city’s contributions to the policy. Director-general, welcome to the show.
Tristan Lyu: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
Eric: Director Lyu, since the implementation of the New Southbound Policy, about two years ago now, what has the Taichung city government been doing to reach out to countries covered by the policy?
Tristan: Actually, we think that a local government can serve as a very good platform, so we focus more on the person-to-person relations and also the firm-to-firm linkages, because Taichung has a lot of overseas Taiwanese investments in south-eastern countries. So we think that by having some events to link overseas Taiwanese firms with the local firms, we can better help the central government to implement those policies.
Eric: The central government’s New Southbound Policy, it covers a wide variety of things, from economics to culture. What areas of the Policy have the Taichung government chosen to focus on, and why?
Tristan: First of all, we have been chosen as the smart machinery capital, so smart machinery is of course one of our focuses. In addition to that, food and bakery, e-commerce, and medical training and clinics are also the other very important fields.
Eric: Can you go into why those particular fields were chosen?
Tristan: Well, because, first of all, we have been exporting a lot of smart machinery equipment to southeastern countries because the overseas production facilities are over there, so it is very natural for us to also try to export our machinery, especially when we talk about smart machinery, it’s a whole new concept. So sending people over there to do better marketing and also technology transformation is very important for us. And also, Taichung has the best cuisine in Taiwan, especially when we talk about food products, some bakery products. For the last four years, we have been participating in very important trade shows in southeastern countries, trying to promote our own bakeries, so that’s also one of our main focuses, especially when we talk about new markets, for example the Muslim markets, that is very important for us. Thirdly, we have a lot of foreign labor population in Taichung city. It’s about maybe 100,000 employees from southeastern countries. So how to utilize that manpower to help us, our own SMEs and also some micro-entrepreneurs, to have their own new markets in southeastern countries is also very important. For the last two years, we have been setting up a new basement, it’s called ASEAN Plaza, in that ASEAN Plaza, we have a lot of micro SMEs and also some startups focusing on e-commerce. And last but not least, Taichung is very famous for medical doctors and hospitals, and those related industries, so it is very natural for us to also export our medical services. So these are the four we have chosen to do more things with those countries.
Eric: How have all these efforts and things you’ve been setting up, how have these actually impacted the city, its residents, and its businesses since it started about two years ago?
Tristan: First of all, I think we have been seeing a lot of very good progress bilaterally. For example, we have been setting up a training base in Indonesia focusing on smart machinery. So when it comes to talent cultivation. Also, for example, some of our medical doctors have chosen overseas partners in Vietnam, setting up new clinics. This is not a one-sided thing, this is a bilateral thing. On the Vietnam side, they also started to send medical doctors over to Taichung to receive six-month to one-year training. This is very on-the-ground, and very well-connected at the micro-level and at the firm-level. We’re not talking about big-picture policies only, we focus more on the person-to-person relations.
Eric: What are the next steps for Taichung as the city government continues to pursue these exchanges with Southeast Asian countries?
Tristan: Once they think that the products and services from Taichung are very useful and very cutting edge, the next step will be to expand the market, so I think the next step for Taichung, no matter from the government’s point of view or the companies’ point of view, I think the next step for us is to do more trades shows. Maybe those consumers and those businessmen in southeastern countries know something about Taiwan, but not in the city level. They might have very little knowledge about Taichung. We are trying to promote ourselves as a convention and activity hub in central Taiwan. I think for the few years to come, we will spend more budgets and form more delegations to Southeastern Asian countries, focusing on those very good and very important areas. For example, this year, we had an ASEAN Smart City convention in Taichung just a couple of weeks ago. Some of the applications are from Singapore and other Southeastern Asian countries. That was a very good start. The next step I think is to promote more presentations, have more presence, in the important key countries like Vietnam, Singapore, and Indonesia, to try and promote our own food, our own manufactured goods, and also services.
Eric: Director-general Lyu, before we go, did you have any final thoughts you’d like to share with our listeners?
Tristan: For the last three years, we have been hosting the Asia-Taiwan Chamber of Commerce annual meetings. It has been very successful. Each year, there were about over one thousand participants, overseas Taiwanese companies, businessmen, coming back to Taichung, that have been forming a very good atmosphere. Looking into the future, we are aiming to continue holding those very tight relations. I hope that the next step, foreign embassies or foreign representative offices in Taiwan can spend more time in Taichung and get to know much more about Taichung. Let’s work together to facilitate bilateral industrial and trade relations.
Eric: We’ve been speaking with Taichung city’s Economic Development Bureau Director-general, Mr. Tristan Lyu. Mr. Lyu, thank you for taking the time to join us on the air today.
Tristan: Thank you for having me. Thank you.
Eric: And that wraps up today’s episode of Looking South. Past episodes of the series can be found on the ICRT Web page, in the Podcast section. I’m Eric Gau, and thank you for tuning in. We’ll be back with a new look at the New Southbound Policy this time next week.