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Nation aids APEC, vice premier says

Vice Premier Wu Rong-i (吳榮義) said yesterday that Taiwan has made three contributions to the Asia-Pacific region -- trade and investment liberalization, security enhancement and economic and technical cooperation -- through its participation in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

Wu made the remarks when he attended a seminar on 2005 APEC issues sponsored by the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER), a local think tank.

Wu, who served as TIER president for a long time before taking up the post of vice premier, has taken part in many APEC-related activities over the years.

Measures

On trade and investment liberalization, Wu said that Taiwan has carried out over 100 liberalization measures on tariffs, non-tariff hurdles, the service sector, investment, standardization, intellectual property rights, government procurement and personnel movement.

On safety enhancement, Wu said that as Taiwan is not a member of the UN, it has been unable to take part in anti-terrorism activities under the auspices of the UN. Since the APEC started to discuss anti-terrorism and security issues, however, Taiwan has been able to get involved in international anti-terrorism activities, he said.

Cooperation

On economic and technology cooperation, Taiwan has made several major initiatives, he said, including an IT schools initiative, which has already been implemented, and an APEC Digital Opportunity Center initiative, which is still being implemented.

Wu said that if the number of times "Chinese Taipei" is mentioned in major APEC declarations is any indication of importance, then Taiwan is becoming more important.

He noted that "Chinese Taipei" was only mentioned six times in the major declaration of APEC before 2000. But from 2000 to the present, Taiwan has been mentioned twice in APEC Leaders' Declarations and 23 times in the annual ministers' declaration.
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