Taipei Times: Apart from making progress on the piracy issue by encouraging the US government to remove Taiwan from the "Priority Watch List" and putting it on the less severe "Watch List" under the Special 301 Law this January, what are the major issues of concern this year? And are you optimistic about seeing any real changes this year?
Tom Johnson: We did make some good progress on the issues we were concerned about in 2003 and 2004, like the Copyright Law (
Our focuses this year are on human resource regulatory reform -- ? loosening the restrictions and cutting the red tape in importing foreign and Chinese professionals. Another focus is on health care and public health -- combatting counterfeit pharmaceuticals and agro-chemicals. Then there are the institutional developments -- helping us work with the government to make faster changes in some of the critical issues we have.
And, yes, we do expect to see real progress this year. Our white paper this year focuses on real core issues and the government hopefully can help and assist us in making real changes. We are looking at how we can help them in setting up a human resources task force to free the flow of human capital back and forth, not only with mainland China but with other countries as well.
TT: Have you received any responses to your concerns from the government?
Johnson: We did receive a couple of responses from the government, which is encouraging, as they really want to listen and talk with us about the changes. We had a request from the Ministry of Education to meet with our education committee members to further discuss how to make progress on on the relaxation of regulations governing foreign universities and degrees, and study-abroad restrictions for male students who are subject to military service obligations, which were highlighted in the white paper.
We also had some feedback from the government on the human resources issue and how we can work together on making improvements. We will be meeting with Premier Frank Hsieh (
TT: Do you expect that Taiwan's government would like the delegation to raise particular concerns in Washington during your "doorknock visit," like the further removal of Taiwan from the "Watch List" of intellectual property rights (IPR) violators under the Special 301 Law?
Johnson: We do have an alignment with the government with the same interest in getting the issues fixed. And what we want to do is to help the government find a way to do it faster.
We made progress last year on Taiwan's removal from the Priority Watch List 301, and we thought the message from the AmCham and some visiting government officials was encouraging. But there is still a way to go on tackling this year's white paper issues, such as pharmaceutical counterfeits and agrochemical knockoffs.
TT: Will you talk about the US-Taiwan free trade agreement (FTA) with US executive agencies and Congress during this year's visit?
RSS