Taiwan Economy

Last January, James Soong, the secretary general of Taiwan's ruling Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), flew into Washington for a private breakfast chat at the home of Vice President Dan Quayle in a session that barely skirted the 13-year ban on official U.S. contacts with Taiwan. "I think they talked about golf," says Kuomintang spokesman Johnny Sand, who accompanied Soong to Washington.

Statistics released over the weekend suggest that Taiwan's economic boom is slowing moderately as a strengthening of the local currency and the central bank's tight money policy take their toll. Industrial production rose 3.73% in May from a year earlier, its slowest rate this year, the Economics Ministry said. Output fell 0.53% from April on a seasonally adjusted basis, partly due to weakness in such export-related sectors as textiles, the ministry said.

Taiwan is cracking down on real estate speculators to head off a resurgence of the frenzied speculation that sent prices soaring--and then crashing--in the past few years, banking and government officials said Friday. The Interior Ministry is revising land utilization rules under which it will raise annual land taxes to check speculation by big corporations, a ministry spokesman said.

The "three Chinas"--China, Hong Kong and Taiwan--will join the 12 other member nations of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation organization when they begin work here today on additional cooperative projects designed to bring the region together economically. The three-day meeting marks the first time that all three nations have joined an international economic organization. APEC was established in 1989 under the leadership of Australia with strong U.S. backing. Secretary of State James A.

Although Taiwan's stock market tumbled last week following an opposition political party's call for the island's independence, the government's top banking official said in Bangkok that he is confident of Taiwan's future as a financial center in Asia. On the economic front, Taiwan has what it takes to become one of Asia's financial nerve centers, said Samuel Shieh, governor of the Central Bank of China.

A series of multimillion-dollar scandals is sweeping Taiwan's financial world as the government cracks down on speculation and fraud by some of the island's wealthiest businessmen. Authorities have charged one of the stock market's biggest players with tax evasion, indicted a textile tycoon for document forgery and raided dozens of finance companies during operations against illegal trading in recent months.