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.