China’s Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation recently issued an interesting report on the possible signing of an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China. The report said an ECFA leaves Taiwan with too little control over imports of agricultural products and commodities from China. The agreement, it said, would affect normal trade between Taiwan and China and hamper further economic cooperation.
Taiwan’s government insists that an ECFA will allow it to place restrictions on Chinese agricultural imports. The thing is, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is pinning his hopes on the agreement to help improve his flagging approval rating and is promising that it will be a done deal before the year is out.
Given the fact that the above warning comes from an official Chinese institution, you would think Taiwanese farmers have good reason to be worried.
Any government worth its weight would make sure the appropriate measures were in place before it opened up trade with another country. It would also have talked to the industries likely to be involved, and possibly allowed a referendum, to make sure there was some kind of consensus.
In the two years Ma has been president, he has failed to deliver a comprehensive policy to transform agriculture, or any guidelines. Instead, he has just tried to push an ECFA. This will not allay farmers’ fears.
Before Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) last visit in December, China was giving assurances it would buy Yunlin County oranges. Since this initial undertaking, they have backtracked in the volume they were to buy, and are offering a price lower than that asked in Taiwan. Farmers are not happy with this. Orange exports to China exemplifies the problems facing Taiwanese farmers. There is no way they will be able to make a living selling to the Chinese market.
China does represent a huge market. However, the low costs of both land and labor there means that Taiwanese imports are going to have to be sold at low prices. Taiwan’s domestic market will also be hit if we are rash enough to open up the field for the import of certain Chinese agricultural products. If this happens, it’s going to be very tough for our farmers to keep their heads above water.
Taiwan leads the way when it comes to agriculture compared with China, and perhaps other countries, in terms of farming techniques, labor and quality control. The government should be working to put this advantage to good use and help our farmers move away from the small farm business model to farming cooperatives or corporate models.
If Taiwanese farmers increase their economies of scale, they will be able to reduce their production costs. The government should help the farmers modernize and move into organic produce. This will have the effect of increasing their products’ added value and, consequently, the prices they can reasonably ask.
More importantly, we need to safeguard Taiwanese agriculture’s biggest hope for moving forward and protect our agricultural gene bank. We need, in other words, to transform traditional agriculture in this country by embracing biotech agriculture. This will help create a sustainable, comprehensive development strategy. Only then will Taiwanese agriculture have a future and not be consigned to the pursuit of a largely illusory market in China.
If the government cannot see the impending crisis in agriculture, or the changes that lie ahead, and keeps on with this preoccupation with signing an ECFA, it will be letting the farmers down.
On May 20, 1988, angry farmers took to the streets of Taipei to demonstrate against deregulation in the industry. If the government is not careful, it runs the risk of seeing a repeat performance in the near future.
Lee Ying-yuan is a former Cabinet secretary-general.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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