The proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration hopes to sign with China sometime next month is, despite what Ma wants the public to believe, a very political affair.
Any doubt that this is not the case was dispelled on Sunday after the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported that customs authorities in Shenzhen City’s Yantian Port, one of the largest container ports in the world, said they would strictly enforce “country of origin” rules, meaning products made in Taiwan would have to be labeled “made in Taiwan, China” or be barred entry into the Chinese market.
Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Sheng-chung (林聖忠) said that Taiwan would not accept this demand, as it went against the spirit of the WHO, of which Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China are separate members.
While it appears that the Chinese Council for the Promotion of International Trade first issued the directive that products from Taiwan be labeled either “Taiwan, China” or “Taipei, China” back in 2005, the demand was not taken seriously by Chinese customs officials — until a few months ago. The Liberty Times reported that in recent months several regions in China have been screening the labeling of Taiwanese products and rejected those marked “Made in Taiwan.”
If this decision was made purely out of economic incentives (as Ma would argue) and was simply an instance of protectionism, what the labeling says would be irrelevant and all goods originating from Taiwan would be blocked. That only goods bearing a Made in Taiwan label are denied entry is a clear indication that the politics of nationalism are influencing trade decisions.
Though the timing represents poor planning on Beijing’s part, it is in line with the open manner in which it has expressed the political undertones of the trade pact. In other words, while Ma has attempted to depoliticize an ECFA, Beijing has not made a secret of the fact that it regards it as a political instrument. The labeling crisis is yet another example of China’s guerrilla-warfare negotiating style. It overshoots, seems to undercut its staunch ally in Taipei, only to then step back and, as a “goodwill” gesture, make further “compromises,” which in this case will likely be a relaxation on labeling policies regarding products made in Taiwan.
Such a move is all the more likely if the labeling issue turns into a political storm that threatens the viability of an ECFA, or even Ma’s chances of being re-elected in 2012. What it does show, however, is that even if the Council for the Promotion of International Trade yields a little, we can expect the policy to re-emerge after 2012, especially once an ECFA has further tied Taiwan’s export-based economy to that of China.
Once hyper-dependence is created and institutionalized — and this is the very object of an ECFA, even if the rules of the game are changed — Taiwanese firms and ministry officials will no longer be in a position to protest and will have to accept the labeling Taiwanese products in a way that denigrates the country’s sovereignty. Furthermore, accepting such an unacceptable arrangement would deal a double blow to Taiwan if “Made in Taiwan, China” goods were intended for re-export, as it would add to Beijing’s relentless campaign to portray Taiwan as part of China, one shipment at a time.
So much for Ma’s apolitical trade pact.
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Many local news media last week reported that COVID-19 is back, citing doctors’ observations and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics. The CDC said that cases would peak this month and urged people to take preventive measures. Although COVID-19 has never been eliminated, it has become more manageable, and restrictions were dropped, enabling people to return to their normal way of life due to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. In Taiwan, mandatory reporting of confirmed cases and home isolation ended in March last year, while the mask mandate at hospitals and healthcare facilities stopped in May. However, the CDC last week said the number