President Ma Ying-jeou met on the morning of May 29 with Dr. John R. Wells, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and an expert in competitive strategy. The president praised Dr. Wells for his distinguished academic reputation, and explained the ROC's progress in international competitiveness and economic performance over the past few years.
In remarks, the president stated that Dr. Wells is internationally renowned for his work in the field of competitiveness and management. He not only specializes in the theory of business, but also from 1986 to 2002 served as the president or chief executive officer of a number of internationally known enterprises. He thus has an enormous amount of practical experience, making him not only a scholar, but also someone who puts his theories into practice. Dr. Wells in 2008 became president of the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland. The IMD has been ranked first for seven consecutive years for its management curriculum for high-level managers in Europe, and each year the institute releases the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook that serves as an important reference for governments throughout the world in formulating economic and administrative policies.
On the topic of Taiwan's performance in competitiveness rankings, the president said that the IMD on May 28 released its World Competitiveness Yearbook 2015 in which Taiwan moved up two notches to 11th place among the 61 countries ranked. Taiwan placed third in the Asia-Pacific region, behind only Hong Kong and Singapore. The rankings include four main sub-indices—economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency, and infrastructure. Of these, Taiwan performed best in government efficiency, ranking ninth this year, up three places from last year. Meanwhile, Taiwan also advanced three notches each in economic performance and business efficiency, ranking 11th and 14th globally, respectively, while dropping one spot in infrastructure to 18th globally, with the IMD indicating that Taiwan needs to catch up quickly in areas in which it is lacking.
The president also mentioned that amid the global trend toward regional economic integration, Taiwan's competitive strategy is to "enhance innovation value at home" and "participate in economic integration abroad."
With respect to "enhancing innovation value at home," the president said that the government began promoting the Youth Entrepreneurship Program at the beginning of last year. In the course of one year, this initiative has led to the creation of over 3,900 start-ups and generated stable jobs for 50,000 people. In addition, the government began promoting the HeadStart Taiwan program in August last year, and to date four investment plans from venture capitalists from Silicon Valley's 500 Startups have been approved, with total funds raised over NT$10 billion. Taiwan also expects to establish the Taiwan Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center in the Silicon Valley in this June to strengthen the links between the two sides in innovation and entrepreneurship, the president said.
As for "participating in economic integration abroad," the president commented that in 2010 Taiwan and mainland China signed the Cross-Straits Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), followed by the signing of the Taiwan-Japan Bilateral Investment Arrangement in 2011, the ANZTEC economic cooperation agreement with New Zealand in July 2013 and the ASTEP economic partnership agreement with Singapore in November of the same year. The results brought about by those agreements have been considerable, but the president acknowledged that to date Taiwan has not become a prospective member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Since these two regional economic mechanisms would in aggregate cover up to 70% of Taiwan's exports, participation in these types of economic integration blocs is extremely important to the development of Taiwan's trade and economy, the president said.
President Ma stressed that he hopes that in the future Taiwan will take advantage of its economic might as the world's 20th largest exporter and 18th largest importer to hasten the promotion of Taiwan's global economic reach so that we can keep pace with other countries around the world. Taiwan's participation in global economic and trade integration will allow the nation to takes its rightful place in the world economy, he said.