President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九)'s speech, titled "Cross-Strait's Economic and Business Development After Economic Tsunami," delivered on March 7th at EMBA Forum hosted by the National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). President Ma also had an in-depth discussion with business delegations at Southern Taiwan. Before the forum, President Ma met with NCKU delegation, led by NCKU President, Academician Michael M.C. Lai. President Ma highly recognized the educational philosophy of President Lai and the academic achievement of NCKU. He also paid attention to the academic communication of cross-strait. '

Transcript of NCKU President's welcoming remark:

President Ma, Minister Yiin, guests from enterprises, Dean of College of Management Dr. Chang, all students,

First of all, I'd like to welcome you all to the EMBA Forum themed on "Cross-Strait's Economic and Business Development After the Economic Tsunami." I especially appreciate President Ma and Minister Yiin's visiting on their tight schedules. This is the second visiting NCKU of President Ma after that kind before his inauguration. Swept by the economic tsunami, many international financial institutions, such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Citibank, and Washington Mutual were severely hit. The economic downturn heavily impacted on all countries globally and the depression is engulfing Taiwan as well: bankrupt business increases, high unemployment, and tremendous diminish on wealth, demands on export and import vastly decreases. The global recession might still continue for a period of time.

Our government has taken many measures, such as lower the bank interest rate, adjust exchange rate, cut down tax, encourage investment, facilitate the infrastructure, encourage domestic consuming, reduce the unemployment rate and improve the cross-strait relations to deal with the financial crisis and improve the economy and some of the measures took effect gradually.

The linkage effect on cross-strait business has occurred during the process of globalization. The economy of mainland China can't be exempt from the economic storm and China's policy of stimulating domestic consuming also has great impact on Taiwan. The focus was emphasized on how to fight for more opportunities for business development among the policies and measures.

I, hereby, wish to learn more about financial crisis's impact and influence on cross-strait economy from the views of government, industries and academia. And the forum is expected to provide the innovative management strategies to cope with the business situation for the audience to keep the competitive advantage in the future economic development.
My best greetings and wishes to all of the esteemed guests, teachers, students and friends and to the best health and good fortune to all of you and success for today's forum.