Member’s General Assembly: The “vTaiwan” Policy Takes Taiwan to the Next Stage of Virtual Reality

Trans-editor: Yating Chan/ Proofreader: Yu-li Liu

Date: May 9, 2015

The Taiwan Communications Society (TCS) invited Minister without Portfolio Yu-ling Tsai to give a talk on “vTaiwan” at its 2015 General Member Assembly on May 9. The “v,” Tsai said, refers to “virtual, venture, and victory,” as she looks forward to seeing more Taiwanese young people migrate from the already flourishing semiconductor and manufacturing industry to the still budding virtual industry, further pushing Taiwan into the global spotlight.  

According to a U.N. survey, the number of global Internet users will reach 5 billion by 2025. The Internet, Tsai said, represents the biggest power vacuum in the world, and its connection network provides many lucrative opportunities and challenges for enterprises worldwide. The Internet can connect many users at a time, bringing in tremendous business opportunities, as a report from Taiwan’s Institute for Information Industry showed that online shopping has generated about 890 billion NT dollars in 2014, with an estimate of more than one trillion NT dollars in 2016.   

Tsai called the Internet a double-edged sword, saying that governments worldwide have not yet developed appropriate policies and regulations, as many that are currently practiced in the physical world are not applicable in the virtual world. 

Tsai said that the government’s vTaiwan policies have three goals. The first is to set up the Virtual World Law Adjustment Platform for collaboration and communication among different government agencies (e.g., loosening restrictions on equity securities, allowing the use of diversified online financial tools, and lifting barriers to cross-boundary transactions and taxes) and make Taiwan a hub of the internet industry.

The second is to set up the E-Commerce Steering Group under the Executive Yuan to assist resource integration among agencies in charge of e-commerce businesses in the short run and to formulate comprehensive planning in the long run (e.g., developing Taiwan as Asia’s e-commerce center for innovation and fundraising).

The last step is to encourage more foreign talent to found startups in Taiwan by establishing an innovative and foreigner-friendly environment, as the Executive Yuan is slated to grant them entrepreneur visas in June.  

Tsai said that she expected to see up-to-date virtual world regulations and an innovation- and startup-friendly environment in Taiwan, which she believed would contribute to a strong virtual industry thriving along its predecessors (the semiconductor and manufacturing industries). She called Taiwan a high-tech island with the potential to develop new business models and said that it had great potential to pioneer in the field of technology laws.