The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday that negotiations on gravel shipping operations across the Taiwan Strait could begin at any time if Chinese regulations on Taiwanese shipping operators do not comply with the spirit of the direct sea transportation agreement signed with Beijing last month.
MAC Deputy Minister Chao Chien-min (趙建民) said that the administration would find out whether China’s requirements failed to comply with the spirit of equal participation, and if that were the case, it would be “properly dealt with.”
“We will immediately launch a negotiation process via the proper channels if such a situation is confirmed,” Chao said. “The Ministry of Transportation and Communications is in the process of investigating.”
Chao said Beijing had also expressed its willingness to talk about the issue should any problems arise.
Chao made the remarks in response to questions about a complaint filed by local gravel shipping operators, who have accused the government of neglecting them during negotiations for direct sea transportations links across the Taiwan Strait.
They criticized the transportation ministry for overlooking their financial plight and asking them to buy new ships. They also complained that China’s requirement that flag-of-convenience ships be less than 33 years old was too strict.
They threatened to use their ships to stage a protest at Taipei Port on Thursday if they did not receive a positive response from the government. Thursday marks the day when Chinese permits issued to five Taiwanese ships are set to expire.
Lee Li-jane (李麗珍), director of the council’s Department of Economic Affairs, said that five Taiwanese ships were allowed to transport gravel across the Taiwan Strait before the agreement was signed and they must apply for new permits from both Taiwan and China before Thursday. However, the department’s understanding was that China had not yet received any application from the firms, Lee said.
As for those who could not obtain a permit before the agreement was signed, Lee said they could continue to ship gravel from China, but they must go through a third country before coming to Taiwan, or they could apply on-line for a single shipment trip. The transportation ministry said it would help them resolve any problems, although the ministry’s position was to encourage them to buy new ships.
Lee said most of those who did not obtain a permit were rejected because their ships were too old. Those operators have asked the Taiwanese government to issue them permits so they would be allowed to ship gravel from China, but Lee said the department’s evaluation was that it would put Taiwan in a less favorable position because China might ask Taiwan to reciprocate for its old ships. Therefore, the proposal was not put on the negotiation table, she said.
The reason that the ships were able to ship gravel before the agreement was signed was because they took advantage of China’s lax implementation of its laws, Lee said.
“Now that the agreement has been signed, that door is closed,” she said.
Regarding the complaint that 10 Chinese ships that Beijing has approved were over the age limit, Lee said the oldest among them was built in 1975 and that ship would not be able to renew its permit next year. Statistics show that Taiwan imports 95 percent of its gravel from China, or 15 million tonnes to 30 million tonnes a year.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
RSS