Proposed supervisory regulations governing negotiations with China should not include any language downplaying national sovereignty, civic campaigners said yesterday in a protest outside the Legislative Yuan.
“From the first character to the last, there should not be any expressions like ‘area’ or anything else that could create the misunderstanding that Taiwan belongs to China,” Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said, adding that his group would reject any version that used loaded words — such as “the mainland” (大陸) — that suggest Taiwan does not already possess full sovereignty.
Sovereignty-related wording differences have been in the spotlight as competing versions of regulations have been referred to the Legislative Yuan’s Internal Administration Committee for review.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
While the Executive Yuan version supported by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) uses “the Taiwan area” to refer to the nation, individual legislators have proposed using “Taiwan,” with pan-green camp political parties seeking to split the difference.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has said that a version to be announced next week would be within the framework of the Republic of China Constitution, while the New Power Party (NPP) version uses “our nation.”
Lai said his group rejected using the “Republic of China” constitutional framework, while “our nation” could be acceptable depending on the context.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
However, he added that the current public focus on sovereignty-related wording, rather than on the content of legislation, was “too narrow.”
The regulations are intended to guarantee greater civic participation in negotiations with China following Sunflower movement protests against opaque and secretive trade talks under the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA).
At a separate news conference, NPP Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) blasted the implementation of the ECFA by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration.
“There was no analysis of the effects on all the different industries and now we can see the consequences,” Hsu said, accusing the administration of having made misleading claims about trade benefits that have not been realized.
National Cheng Kung University law professor Hsu Chung-hsin (許忠信) said that the ECFA had failed to increase exports as promised, in part because of “dynamic effects” that encouraged businesses to move operations to China.
While the agreement explicitly excluded agricultural products, it created expectations that the nation’s agricultural market would eventually be opened, indirectly bolstering China’s agricultural sector by encouraging Taiwanese producers to invest and transfer technology.
“We would have expected ‘early harvest’ products to get better results overall, but they have actually done worse,” he said, referring to the list of agricultural products for which China agreed to unilaterally drop tariffs.
Extensive analysis and reporting requirements on the effects of cross-strait agreements are a key provision of the “civic version” of supervisory regulations proposed following the 2014 Sunflower movement.
The legislative general assembly referred the draft bills proposed by DPP legislators Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) and Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) and the NPP caucus to the Internal Administration Committee for review.
In her draft bill, Yu used “cross-strait” to describe the relationship between Taiwan and China, while Lee used “Taiwan” and “China” and the NPP used “our nation” and “the People’s Republic of China.”
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