China on Monday announced plans to extend a unilateral investigation into what it calls Taiwan’s trade barriers by three months to Jan. 12 next year, the eve of Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections, showing Beijing’s intention to interfere in the vote.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced on April 12, the day that the Democratic Progressive Party nominated Vice President William Lai (賴清德) as its presidential candidate, a probe into Taiwan’s import regulations on 2,455 types of products from China.
On Monday, China said that the probe, which was supposed to be completed this month, would be extended due to “complexities.” The announcement, as is typical for Beijing, was made in a brief statement with few details and no explanation for the decision.
Most of Taiwan’s regulations on imports from China have been in place since 1993 with the promulgation of the Regulations Governing Trade Between the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區貿易許可辦法), which provides access to Chinese goods if they are not deemed a danger to national security and have no major adverse effects on local industries. Since then, Taiwan has approved imports of at least 9,835 Chinese agricultural and industrial products.
The legislation was in place when Taiwan and China joined the WTO in 2002 and 2001 respectively. Taiwan’s ban on some Chinese imports on protectionist and national security grounds was not in breach of WTO rules. Taipei has shown goodwill, never listing China as ineligible for fair tariffs, and has repeatedly called on bilateral negotiations, including on trade issues.
However, China has never followed WTO rules regarding dialogue with Taiwanese officials. Data from the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations show that for the past two decades, China had never expressed concerns, let alone suggesting an investigation was warranted, over trade barriers, not even in its negotiations with Taiwan over the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement.
However, China launched its probe, ignoring the lack of mutual negotiations and notification procedures that go against the norms of WTO dispute settlement procedures.
Moreover, it has acted at a critical moment, right before crucial elections in Taiwan, and bolstered it with the deployment by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army of record numbers of warplanes and ships around Taiwan.
The probe is a political tool aimed at applying economic pressure to affect Taiwan’s elections, adding an entry to China’s ploy of combining military and economic coercion to influence Taiwanese voters and benefit pro-China candidates.
Beijing can be expected to ramp up the probe, implementing more sanctions on Taiwanese products or even ending some of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement’s preferential tariffs.
The government and industries should prepare countermeasures for such action.
However, Beijing should have learned that its coercive tactics would prompt Taiwanese to vote contrary to its political aspirations, while its unilateral economic manipulations, which contravene international rules, run the risk of losing Taiwanese and foreign investment, which would do even more damage to its turbulent economy.
As WTO members, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should hold bilateral consultations or initiate multilateral dispute settlement mechanisms to address trade issues in accordance with the world body’s regulations.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS