Taiwan Church News

3304 Edition

June 22 - 28, 2015

Church Ministry

China State Enterprise To Hold Shares Of Taiwan's Biggest Financial Holding

Reported by Chiu Kuo-rong

In the afternoon on June 21, Economic Democracy Union(EDU) held a pressconference warning the impact of the impending China state enterprise's equity participation into Taiwan's biggest financial holding company. This accusation referred to the coming deal of China CITIC Bank to bid 3.8% of total shares of Taiwan's CTBC Financial Holding.

Mr. Lai Chong-chian, Chairman of EDU, pointed out that China CITIC Bank wasactually a state enterprise under China's State Department. Founded in 1979, under the approval of Deng Xiao-ping, this state-run bank's founder(Rong Yi-ren) and current managing director(Chang Zhen-ming) were all communist bureaucrats assigned. "This is a 100% state-run strategic enterprise, with a real role-play deeply rooted within Chinese power machines like national security, intelligence and military forces", said Lai.

What kind of social and political impact to bear on Taiwan society, once China CITIC Bank is allowed to hold shares of CTBC Financial Holding? Lai warned that there were three folds crisis implicit in this private deal of increasing cash capital: freedom of speech, security of personal data, and political censorship.

As CTBC Financial Holding has an annual marketing budget about NT$ 2.8 billions in Taiwan's media promotion, the freedom of speech and media independence would be greatly endangered or even manipulated once China CITIC Bank is allowed an equity participation into CTBC Financial Holding, said Lai.

It is beyond doubt that the data security of citizens and enterprises in Taiwan would be exposed to an unpredictable risk, as the number of credit card issuance by CTBC Financial Holding is the biggest among her peer. Lai expressed, once this deal is done, China CITIC Bank could easily get access to Taiwan's Joint Credit Information Center without any external check. And this is a issue of national security.

As to the political censorship through the withdrawal of advertisement, there had beenalready an ugly precedent by China CITIC Bank during Hong Kong's Umbrella revolution last year. It certainly made Taiwan society wary that whether China CITIC Bank would get involved into any loan censorship in order to comply with China's interests, said Lai.

To fight against China's invasion into Taiwan's financial market, Lai urgedshareholders of CTBC Financial Holding, Taiwan society and Financial Supervisory Commission to oppose this deal. Otherwise, if the Trojan horse - China CITIC Bank - could not be stopped to enter into town, EDU would launch a grand-scale consumer boycott movement against CTBC Financial Holding!

Translated by Peter Wolfe