The recent signing of an investment protection accord between Japan and Taiwan is good news. However, for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to say that it is a result of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed with China last year is just too much. Not only does such a claim not stand up to the evidence, it also completely ignores the industry of the governments of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administrations that followed, or that of the Taiwanese public.
The suggestion is that Japan is hoping to use Taiwan to enter the China market, using the investment accord and the ECFA as stepping stones. One would think a better way forward for Japan, if it is looking to sell its products in China, would be to sign a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Beijing directly, and bypass any third parties.
By the same rationale, if it really were the ECFA that attracted Japan to signing the accord with Taiwan, one has to question why it hasn’t yet signed an FTA or an investment -agreement with another country that already has such an agreement with China. This would certainly be better than the ECFA, which after all is merely a framework agreement. The fact is, with the exception of ASEAN, Japan has never prioritized entering into negotiations on FTAs with any of the countries that already have an FTA with China.
More importantly, the main reason Japan signed the FTA with ASEAN in 2008, in addition to concerns over the WTO Doha round of trade negotiations, was that it was worried about China’s overbearing influence in the ASEAN-plus-China FTA, which would leave Japan in a weakened position. In other words, Tokyo signed with ASEAN through strategic considerations and not because of any aspirations regarding the China market. This example is certainly relevant to the discussion on Japan’s stance vis-a-vis Taiwan.
We know from confidential US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks that Ma was not the preferred victor of the 2008 presidential election, as far as former Japanese representative to Taiwan Tadashi Ikeda was concerned. Indeed, developments since then seem to have proven Ikeda’s concerns at the time to have been well founded.
Since Ma became president, for example, there have been two clashes over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). Ma gave his own interpretation of the 1952 Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty, for which he earned a rebuke by Ikeda’s successor, Masaki Saito, in a speech. In the end, Saito decided to resign at the end of 2009, the year the Ma administration had touted as “The Year to Foster a Special Partnership Between Taiwan and Japan.”
Moreover, at the beginning of last year, Japanese media were describing relations between Taiwan and Japan as “frozen.” If it hadn’t been for donations from Taiwanese following Japan’s earthquake and tsunami on March 11, showing the Japanese the warmth and goodwill of Taiwanese, it is anyone’s guess when the damage to the mutual trust between the two countries would have been repaired and when relations would have thawed.
The great strides forward in Taipei-Tokyo relations in Taiwan’s post-democracy period are the fruits of hard work by former presidents Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and the Taiwanese public. Before the DPP lost power, the Japanese representative to Taiwan at the time said he believed relations between the two countries were in the best state they had been since the severing of official diplomatic relations in 1972.
Ma’s claims that all progress in relations subsequent to the signing of the ECFA has been a direct result of the agreement are completely unfounded. Not only that, they disregard all of the unsung industry of Taiwanese and the results this has achieved, in spite of his own shambolic efforts in this regard over the past three years.
Lai I-chung is an executive committee member of Taiwan Thinktank.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry