President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has opened a “back door” for Chinese investment to be exempt from restrictions in the planned free economic pilot zones (FEPZs) before the zones are established and the cross-strait service trade agreement clears the legislature, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers said yesterday.
“It is illegal. It is like a false start in the 100 meter dash,” DPP Legislator Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) told a press conference.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) secretly bulletined an amended Measures Governing Investment Permit to the People of the Mainland Area (大陸地區人民來台投資許可辦法) on Thursday last week, which lifted the restrictions on the category, ratio and amount for Chinese investment as long as there are no national security concerns, Cheng said.
As the service trade pact is still awaiting legislative screening and the special statute on FEPZs — which are to be established across the country in the hope of boosting the economy by liberalization of personnel, logistics and financial flows, relaxation of investment restrictions and tax incentives — has yet to be sent to the Legislative Yuan, the administration has unilaterally and illegally opened the door to Chinese investors, Cheng said.
The unilateral measure would likely make the FEPZs the “Chinese economic pilot zones,” DPP Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said.
The move was indicative of Ma’s strategy to bypass legislative monitoring and allow the influx of Chinese investment regardless of whether lawmakers eventually ratify the trade agreement or not, Chen said.
Chinese investors could now invest on any sector in the FEPZs they want, Chen said.
Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強), spokesperson for the Democratic Front Against Cross-Strait Trade in Service Agreement (反黑箱服貿民主陣線), said the government had violated the Constitution because the FEPZ special statute has not been enacted.
The regulation on Chinese investment should be in place before the legislature begins screening the service trade pact, Lai said.
“Otherwise, the administrative branch could liberalize those investment categories scrapped by lawmakers by administrative orders and the legislative screening would be meaningless,” Lai said.
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
ALLEGED SABOTAGE: The damage inflicted by the vessel did not affect connection, as data were immediately rerouted to other cables, Chunghwa Telecom said Taiwan suspects that a Chinese-owned cargo vessel damaged an undersea cable near its northeastern coast on Friday, in an alleged act of sabotage that highlights the vulnerabilities of Taipei’s offshore communications infrastructure. The ship is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company whose director is Chinese, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. An unidentified Taiwanese official cited in the report described the case as sabotage. The incident followed another Chinese vessel’s suspected involvement in the breakages of data cables in the Baltic Sea in November last year. While fishing trawlers are known to sometimes damage such equipment, nation states have also
RSS