Sun, Jul 28, 2024 page2

• Academics urge changes to nation’s procurement laws

  • By Chung Li-hua and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  Academics yesterday urged that amendments be made to the Government Procurement Act (政府採購法) to allow national security exceptions to transparency rules to protect key facilities and equipment from China.

  They made the remarks at a conference on laws and national security held by the Taiwan New Century Foundation and Taiwan Society of International Law in Taipei.

  Kuo Yu-jen (郭育仁), a professor at the Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies at National Sun Yat-sen University, said government contracts regarding military equipment and key infrastructure should be exempted from legal requirements.

  

  Panelists attend a forum hosted by the Taiwan New Century Foundation and the Taiwan Society of International Law in Taipei yesterday.

  Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times

  Under the current procurement laws the government must publish information about a number of key weapon systems and infrastructure, including command and control radar systems, warships, power plants, dams and railyards, he said.

  The lack of secrecy makes it easy for Beijing to attack these systems and facilities, and compromise the private sector companies they depend on to function, Kuo said, adding that national resiliency is impossible under these conditions.

  The democratic tendency to maintain transparency sometimes creates inadvertent national security vulnerabilities, he said, adding that the government must expend the political capital needed to make controversial, but necessary decisions.

  Taiwan chronically neglected the danger posed by Beijing’s campaign of legal warfare directed at the nation, Kuo said.

  The nation could not punish people for leaking core national technology to hostile foreign powers until the 2022 amendments to the National Security Act (國家安全法) and Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), he said.

  Pan-blue legal experts’ insistence on the maintenance of a China-centric constitutional framework has prevented efforts to fill the legal vacuum in matters concerning Taiwanese national sovereignty, Kuo said.

  Meanwhile, pan-green academics believe no actions are needed to bolster the Republic of China’s sovereignty due to their preoccupation with ultimately asserting Taiwanese independence, he said.

  The situation enables Beijing to negate Taiwan’s national sovereignty, assert administrative jurisdiction and ultimately limit the actions of Taiwanese and their government, Kuo said.

  Ford Liao (廖福特), a research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institutum Iurisprudentiae said the current laws compel the government to disclose information that should be kept secret.

  Under these conditions, the location of command and control radar systems and the maintenance schedule of key equipment cannot be protected from prying eyes, including those of Chinese intelligence, he added.

  The most essential issue is protecting national sovereignty, but Taiwan’s laws are unable to state without equivocation that Chinese nationals are foreigners, he said.

  The object of Beijing’s legal warfare is to transform Taiwan into a Chinese territory by undermining Taiwanese and international laws, he said.

  China complained when a Chinese speedboat capsized off Kinmen after it was chased by a coast guard vessel in February, which resulted in the death of two Chinese men, because it was aware that Taiwan had not demarcated a baseline for its outlying islands or solidified the cross-strait median line into law, he said.

  The path Chinese warships have taken when conducting exercises in the seas around Taiwan is a deliberate attempt to reshape international law in Beijing’s favor, he said.
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