Taiwan starts to help crisis-hit Southeast Asia

Taiwan starts to help crisis-hit Southeast Asia

TAIPEI (Reuters): Wealthy Taiwan pressed ahead with a drive to help cash-strapped Southeast Asian neighbors yesterday and rejected rival China's renewed allegations that its motives were less than altruistic.

The ruling Nationalist Party's powerful investment boss, Liu Tai-ying, disclosed plans to lead a March mission of Taiwan tycoons to financially battered Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, the second such mission this year.

Liu oversees one of the world's biggest political fortunes -- seven Nationalist Party holding companies that control assets worth more than US$3 billion.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen assailed Taiwan's financial diplomacy, impugning its motives and warning Asia that Taipei's overtures would come to no good.

"Some Taiwan political figures have traveled to many countries in the region in an attempt to profit from these countries' difficult situations, and to serve their own political purpose," Qian said.

"I think these activities of Taiwan are out of ulterior motives and I do not think they will produce any good results."

Qian accused Taiwan of exacerbating Asia's financial crisis by allowing its currency to depreciate in October.

Taiwan spokesman Chen Chien-jen dismissed Qian's claims, saying private travels by Taiwan's vice-president and premier to the region reflected only good will and a desire to help.

"Qian Qichen's comments are untrue. This is totally unacceptable," Chen, head of the Government Information Office, was quoted by the official Central News Agency as saying.

Chen said Taipei's initiatives were based on friendship and sought only to understand the financial crisis that has swept Asia since mid-1997 and consider ways of helping.

"Our motive is simple and genuine," Chen said. "We hope the Chinese communist leaders can adjust their attitude."

Taiwan, seen by Beijing as a renegade province, has met some success in using the island's huge wealth to combat a diplomatic embargo enforced by communist China.

Taiwan has diplomatic ties with no Asian country -- all of them recognize only Beijing -- but Premier Vincent Siew and Vice- President Lien Chan recently have been welcomed in private by the leaders of Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia.

The 24 Taiwan industrial and financial leaders who will join the March 17-25 mission hope to identify targets for a planned T$20 billion (US$625 million) government-inspired private fund to channel badly needed capital into the region.

"We want to have a final survey of the investment opportunities in those countries before we form the Southeast Asian holding company," Liu's spokeswoman Grace Fang told Reuters.

Fang said the fund would be split evenly between listed stocks and unlisted firms in the crisis countries. A U.S. investment firm would select the targeted stocks, she said.

Taiwan is the last outpost of the Nationalist Republic of China that the communists defeated on the mainland in 1949.