The cross-strait service trade agreement is part of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) “triangle policy” toward eventual unification with China and should not have been signed, a pro-independence advocacy group said yesterday.
“We believe that the agreement, along with the ‘one China’ principle, and a meeting between Ma and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), form a triangle policy of Ma’s goal of eventual unification,” former presidential advisor Huang Tien-ling (黃天麟) wrote in a booklet published by the Taiwan Society.
A collection of several academic works, the booklet titled Crisis of the service trade agreement — a modern-day Trojan horse was officially launched yesterday at a press conference.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
Breaking down the agreement into how it affects the economy, society, national security, democracy and institutionalized negotiations, the authors conclude that the pact is more of a political agreement than an economic one.
The cross-strait service trade agreement, which was signed in June, has touched upon the core aspect of the nation’s industries under the common market structure laid out in the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed in 2009, and it could further tie the nation’s economy to the Chinese economy and have a devastating effect on small and medium-sized businesses, Huang said.
“Beijing’s strategy of reunification by trade is an open secret, which is why discussion of the agreement without a political deliberation would be foolish,” Huang said.
The agreement, which is due to be screened clause-by-clause in the legislature, was controversial due to the opaque way it was signed and the scale of its negative impacts on various local sectors of the service industry, in particular banking, retail and agriculture.
Closer cross-strait banking integration could cause a financial crisis if loans to Chinese end up as bad debts, National Taipei University professor Wang To-far (王塗發) told the press conference.
Once the trade in goods agreement is signed by the end of this year, Chinese investors would be able to dictate Taiwan’s retail market and integrate supply, wholesale and retail, retired National Taiwan University professor Kenneth Lin (林向愷) said.
The agricultural sector would face the same situation if the current ban on certain Chinese agricultural products is lifted, Lin added.
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