COVID-19 Pandemic Drives Reforms! Taiwan's National Development Council Issues Seven Arrows, Targeting Which Areas?

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has accelerated many events, with the over-inflated economy collapsing, intensified US-China rivalry, and significant impacts on the fields of healthcare, finance, politics, and livelihoods. Technological development has become an indispensable solution, and the National Development Council of Taiwan released a press release yesterday (18), stating that after gathering opinions from experts and scholars, the focus of the ""Post-COVID-19 Taiwan Economic Development Strategy" should focus on seven major areas. Although most areas have room for blockchain technology, the word "blockchain" only appears once in the 32-page report. This report is also seen as the graduation project of the current chairperson Chen Mei-ling before stepping down, to be succeeded by the current political deputy, Kung Ming-hsin.

What are the highlights of the seven arrows proposed by the National Development Council?

First Arrow "Health Industry": Digital Therapy, Epidemic Prevention Industry

In simple terms, it optimizes care and medical effects for mental or chronic diseases through wearable devices, equipment, sensors, etc., beyond drug therapy. This also includes epidemic prevention technologies such as rapid test reagents and vaccine development.

Second Arrow "Zero-Contact Economy": Enhancing Enterprise Digitization Capability

The focus is on enhancing enterprises' capabilities to seize zero-contact business opportunities, helping overcome pain points such as data protection, difficult operation interfaces, and poor user experience.

Third Arrow "Labor Market Flexibility": Labor Rights Protection in New Economic Forms

It aims to protect labor rights and rules setting for new work models like platform economy, sharing economy, gig economy, and subscription economy.

Fourth Arrow "Taiwan as the Asia-Pacific Innovation Center": Sole Mention of Blockchain

Encouraging corporate investment and acquisition of startups, as well as deploying AIoT (Artificial Intelligence + Internet of Things), with blockchain being one of the technologies for its application.

Fifth Arrow "Developing Data Economic Ecosystem"

Promoting open data and legalizing data reuse to enhance the domestic data sharing application environment. Also, constructing a national-level data platform, among others.

Sixth Arrow "Enhancing Supply Chain Resilience": Decentralization

Developing supply chain lists outside of China to reduce dependency on Chinese supply chains, including industries like components and food.

Seventh Arrow "Establishing a Digital Capital Market": STO (Security Token Offering)

The seventh arrow is highly related to STO, involving initiatives such as accelerating the establishment of a qualified angel investor list on equity crowdfunding platforms, relaxing regulations on current securities firm equity crowdfunding platforms, providing angel investment incentives, establishing a private company equity trading platform, relaxing STO mechanism trading restrictions, and easing regulations on fixed-income securities issuance, among others. It also mentions concerns about the development of digital currency financial issues like Libra and digital yuan.

How is the current financial regulatory sandbox?

A special topic was once done on the regulatory sandbox under the jurisdiction of the Financial Supervisory Commission. The parts related to blockchain and cryptocurrency proposed by the National Development Council, such as "Zero-Contact Economy" and "Establishing a Digital Capital Market," are relevant to the Financial Supervisory Commission. As for the current participants in the regulatory sandbox, they are mainly enterprises, and the process takes a long time. The blockchain layout of the post-epidemic economy may not be able to emerge so quickly.

Related Readings

• [Special Topic] What is the regulatory sandbox playing with, and can financial innovation be affordably implemented in Taiwan?
• China's High-Difficulty Version of Regulatory Sandbox! Beijing Financial Bureau Director: Next week's list will definitely include blockchain financial applications
• [Insight] After reading the Libra 2.0 whitepaper, analyze the motivations and methods of the four major changes

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