Liberalization of Taiwan’s Securities Markets – The Case of Cross-Taiwan-Strait Listings

The purpose of this paper is to examine the liberalization of Taiwan's capital market regarding cross-Taiwan-Strait listing of securities. Taiwan is in an advantageous position to compete with other Asian rivals to attract issuers and capital from China. However, the long political hostility ensures that there is little regulatory cooperation on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Assuming that the creation of a cross-strait capital market is an unstoppable trend, this paper examines from the perspective of regulatory competition several regimes that may facilitate Taiwan to overcome regulatory obstacles arising from the special Sino-Taiwan relationship. This paper argues that regulatory cooperation or even harmonization of Sino-Taiwan laws will be very difficult. However, the cooperation of stock exchanges in China and Taiwan may be a first step toward further official collaboration. Another approach is to strengthen domestic supervision in Taiwan with a sponsorship program. Nevertheless, such a program may be very expensive to maintain. Given the regulatory obstacles between Taiwan and China, a better approach seems to open an alternative trading market with more flexible rules designed for Chinese securities in Taiwan. Such a market-oriented approach may liberalise Taiwan's capital market to Chinese and foreigners, while still maintain the level of domestic investor protection without raising much regulatory and compliance costs