The recently signed cross-strait trade pact could boost the chances of a Taiwan-EU free-trade agreement (FTA), but the proposal would have to first move past the drawing board, an economic expert said on the sidelines of an international conference on China’s rise in Taipei yesterday.
“It will give a stronger political logic for the EU to sign an FTA with Taiwan,” said Razeen Sally, a director at the European Centre of International Political Economy (ECIPE), a Brussels-based research group.
“Simply signing an FTA with Taiwan by [itself] would not work for the EU, because Taiwan is too small of an economy and it will hardly make any difference to the EU,” he said. “Of course, it might risk upsetting Beijing in the process.”
The government signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China late last month, saying that it hoped other trading partners would follow suit and sign FTAs with Taiwan in the face of improving cross-strait ties.
However, recent comments by Chinese officials on the issue have sent mixed signals on whether Beijing would relax its staunch opposition to Taiwan engaging in trade talks with other countries.
Late last month, Taiwan Affairs Office director Wang Yi (王毅) reportedly said that China could understand Taiwan’s need to sign FTAs with other countries on the basis of economic expansion.
However, a few weeks earlier, Ma Zhaoxu (馬朝旭), a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, told a press conference that China would continue to stand against Taiwanese efforts to develop any type of official economic agreement along with other countries.
“Taiwan wants FTAs with other trading partners — [but] it isn’t going to happen without a Chinese green light ... The ECFA is this green light, and in this sense perhaps ECFA and other FTAs are linked,” Sally said.
However, he said that for the moment, a Taiwan-EU trade deal was “not even on the radar screen.”
The EU needed to be satisfied on two fronts before it would consider signing an FTA with Taiwan, he said.
“Firstly that it won’t upset Beijing — this is where the ECFA comes into play. Second is that the ECFA will become a foundation for Taiwan to be more integrated into the greater China supply chain,” Sally said. “Then there might be a stronger commercial reason to sign an FTA with Taiwan.”
Following the ECFA, Taiwan could be used as a hub for high-value trade and investment for both the Chinese market and the wider East Asian market, he said, adding that this would give EU businesses more incentive to set up in Taiwan.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
RSS