Chinese Information Vice Minister to Visit TSMC and Hon Hai Heads Over Cooperation Deals

Huai Jinpeng, Vice Minister of mainland China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is scheduled to visit the chairmen of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and Hon Hai/Foxconn Technology Group over cooperation deals during his stay in Taiwan for a technology forum.

Informed resources point out that Huai will propose to TSMC Chairman Morris Chang and Hon Hai/Foxconn Chairman Terry Guo cooperation between Taiwan and China on semiconductor, Industry 4.0-based smart manufacturing and Internet of Things (IoT) industries.

Huai, in charge of drawing up the mainland's semiconductor industry policy, visited Taiwan the first time to attend a forum held September 22 through 23 to address development of standards for the information industry and technology between Taiwan and the mainland.

The forum, held in 2005 for the first time, is co-organized by Taiwan's SINOCON Industrial Standards Foundation as well as the mainland's China Electronic Standardization Association and China Communications Standards Association.

Since 2005, the two sides have reached agreement on 31 common standards for nine industries, including solid-state lighting, flat display panel, photovoltaic, automotive electronics, and mobile telecommunications/mobile Internet. Of these standards, 11 including the ones for LED, flat display panel, and photovoltaic industries have been adopted as the mainland's national standards and six bilaterally set for the photovoltaic industry have been adopted by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and Semiconductor Equipment & Materials International (SEMI).

This year, Huai also signed an agreement with MediaTek Inc., recognized as Taiwan's No.1 fabless house, to allow the mainland's fabless houses to use MediaTek's Linkit platform as an important tool for their development of wearable devices for IoT. In return, the agreement also provides a superb opportunity into the mainland's IoT market, according to industry executives.

For the first time, Huai and his Taiwanese counterpart at the forum, Deputy Economic Minister S.C. Cho, signed a cooperation memorandum on Internet of Vehicles (IoV). Industry executives point out that the two sides will initially work together on Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) as the first step of the agreement.

SINOCON executives note that the agreement provides Taiwan's ADAS suppliers a potentially massive opportunity in consideration of the reality that the mainland is the world's biggest vehicle market, where around 20 million cars are sold a year and yet ADAS installations are still relatively low.

This year, common standards the two sides signed include the ones for 4G voice over LTE (VoLTE) and small cell technologies for time division-long term evolution (TD-LTE) mobile technology, white light emitting diodes (LEDs), 4K2K liquid crystal display (LCD) panels, smart onboard telematics system, and lithium battery.

Taiwan's industry executives point out that setting common standards for industries on Taiwan and the mainland as early as possible would be instrumental to Taiwan's manufacturers competing for business opportunities in the vast mainland Chinese market given that Beijing is vigorously promoting several monumental economic development projects, including the 13th Five Year Plan, Made in China 2025, and IMT2020 5G.

Huai attended the forum accompanied by around 100 executives from China's iconic enterprises including China Mobile Ltd., the Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings Ltd., Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., ZTE Corp., BOE Technology Group Ltd., Inspur Group Co., Ltd., and TrinaSolar Co., Ltd.