Responses

Day light saving time period: EST is 12 hours lag of Taiwan Time. Ordinary: 13 hours difference. E.g. 12:00 pm of EST is the next day of 01:00 am in Taiwan . In general, time zone difference won’t cause any inconvenience in doing business with Taiwan . If we view this time zone difference in a more constructive way, we can run a program in 24 hours a day. This is an advantage.

The current Taiwan government is asking for independent from China , whichever it is, People’s Republic of China (PRC) or Republic of China (ROC), despite of the people who lives in Taiwan are all Chinese.

The calling for independent is the most unstable factor in political system. When doing business in Taiwan or China , the best suggestion is not to touch or discuss any political topics with Taiwanese or Chinese. The different political opinion could be very possible to harm the business relationship.

Taiwan once was the number 1 in the manufacturing of IT industry in the world. Companies founded their headquarters in Taiwan and built their supply chain all over the world. To fulfill the demand from different customers, companies need the reliable system to assure the satisfaction to each customer. The reliability of telecommunication infrastructure is only the most basic requirement.

There is absolutely no need to speak mandarin or Taiwanese in order to do business in Taiwan . People in Taiwan can communicate with foreigner in English ( probably not fluent, but it’s ok to communicate), which is the only foreign language that is the obligatory course starting from junior high school in Taiwan’s education system. For a college graduate student, English reading is assumed to be no problem. Speaking and listening ability is probably a little bit weaker.

A concept should be firstly kept in mind. This is a flat world and an instant world. We can across the world to wherever we want to and make things happen by only press a button. People who run a company in Taiwan want to make money in each trade opportunity. They’d like to build long term partners relationship in stead of one time business. Most of the CEO or GM of Taiwan ’s company, they are westernized in whatever way because of the education system. Professors were educated in the US and the textbooks they are using were also from US. Yet, Taiwanese is an oriental Chinese after all. They value the human relationship sometimes even above the legal contract under no violation of law condition. They emphasize on Quality Assurance and think highly of customer satisfaction.

The efficiency of private enterprise is high above on that of the government.

The policy of government is too political and sometimes is predictable from running an abnormal government. This will be the high risk to be thought of when doing business in Taiwan .