Taipei Travel

In the company of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang and Far Eastern Group Chairman Douglas Hsu, Mayor Ko Wen-je attended the 2022 Far Eastern Group Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in the evening of November 29.

During his address, the mayor pointed out that COVID-19 has brought significant impact upon the global community over the past three years. Our lives have been completely changed and the distance among people have widened. Now, with the subsiding of the pandemic, our daily life can once again return to what it used to be.

Ko stressed that the Far Eastern Group has claimed 38 awards at the 2022 GCSA (Global Corporate Sustainability Awards) and TCSA (Taiwan Corporate Sustainability Awards), making it the biggest corporate winner in Taiwan. Chairman Hsu also received the Corporate Sustainability Lifetime Achievement Award, which shows that the rest of the group will follow if the leader takes the first steps in supporting sustainability practices. 

The mayor remarked that businesses today no longer see profit-making as the sole objective. In fact, many corporations regard ESG (Environmental Social Governance) as major factors affecting their overall sustainable development. The public-private partnership mechanism also plays an important role. The city government has been promoting the vision of “Smart City: Sustainable Living” for a number of years, which won it numerous praises from the international community.

Citing the passenger volume of Taipei’s MRT, Ko believes that crowd flow also reflects the flow of cash. With the passenger volume returning to the level of pre-pandemic days, the trend indicates that our society is slowly heading back to the ‘norm’. He hopes that citizen will be able to enjoy a happy and prosperous 2023, and that Taipei can become one of the happiest cities in the world.