The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday that recent public comments by government officials on a planned economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China have fallen short of initial claims made about its benefits.
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration plans to sign an ECFA as early as next month, pending the next round of cross-strait negotiations.
The government expects the agreement — which will lower trade barriers and tariffs on a number of goods, details of which have yet to be announced — to boost Taiwan’s economy.
However, the DPP has argued that the government has not remained consistent on the claims, citing comments recently made by Ma that differed with earlier information on what the agreement would entail.
Information provided by the DPP shows that the president said in early February that the three main components of an ECFA would comprise tariff agreements, investment protection mechanisms and intellectual property protection.
In the debate with DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) earlier this month, Ma backtracked on those comments and acknowledged that investment protection mechanisms would be included in an ECFA only in name, while the actual content of those mechanisms would be subject to further negotiation.
Meanwhile, the DPP also said that the government has also backtracked on earlier promises to include petrochemicals and automobile parts in the “early harvest” list of sectors subject to immediate tariff reductions with China.
The Chinese-language Want Daily quoted unnamed government officials earlier this month as saying that the inclusion of a number of the products on the list has been strongly opposed by Beijing.
DPP spokesperson Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) accused the government of first exaggerating the benefits of an ECFA and then downplaying the issues the closer it gets to signing the agreement.
“An ECFA will never live up to the government’s claims. Instead, as has been seen through the negotiation phase, it is full of problems and uncertainty,” Tsai said.
Opposition parties and labor groups have expressed concern that the agreement could flood Taiwan with cheap Chinese goods, impacting small businesses and traditional industries.
A sit-in protest over an ECFA, organized by pro-independence groups, is scheduled to take place in front of the legislature for three days starting on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) yesterday established a task force to deal with the negative consequences an ECFA could bring the city.
Chen told the city council that the central government had been oblivious to the concerns of the DPP and businesspeople about laborers’ rights and the nation’s sovereignty if the nation signs an ECFA with China.
Chen said she was very worried about the impact the proposed ECFA might have on the city, adding that she had instructed Deputy Mayor Lee Yung-te (李永得) to organize a task force composed of city government officials who are experts in finance, economics and labor affairs.
The task force would be responsible for proposing measures to help city residents cope with the impact of an ECFA, she said.
Chen said the city government would establish an ECFA-related fund to take care of workers in Kaohsiung whose livelihoods might be threatened by the pact.
Kaohsiung City Government Labor Bureau Director-General Chung Kung-chao (鍾孔炤) told the council that farmers and employees in the steel industry in Greater Kaohsiung — a planned merger between the city and Kaohsiung County — could suffer the most from the proposed ECFA.
Chung expressed concern that the nation’s unemployment rate could hit 10 percent after the pact is signed.
However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Po-lin (黃柏霖) questioned the validity of the statistics.
In related developments, during a conference held by the think tank Taiwan Competitiveness Forum in Taipei, former DPP legislator and political commentator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) criticized the rationale behind Ma’s cross-strait policy as “outdated.”
“The rationale is that we have to rely on China for everything, but it is not necessarily appropriate to apply the outdated rationale to modern [Taiwanese] society,” Lin said.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
RSS