A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator yesterday accused China of pressuring Indonesia not to buy Taiwan-made fishing boats.
DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) told a press conference that Taiwan’s fishing boat building industry had in the past made many boats for Indonesian companies, but since the beginning of this year, Indonesia has not placed any orders because China has been pressuring it via ASEAN not to buy Taiwan-made fishing boats.
Kuan said the action had seriously harmed Taiwan’s boat building industry because since Taiwan’s fisheries had shrunk, the industry now relied on Indonesia and other Southeast Asian counties to place orders.
“Even as Beijing moves to sign an economic cooperation framework agreement [ECFA] with Taiwan and enhance trade between the two sides, it is trying to bar Taiwan from expanding trade links with other countries,” Kuan said.
Still, the government seems unaware of China’s intentions, she said.
Kuan said she brought the issue to the attention of the Council of Agriculture’s Fisheries Bureau. The bureau asked Indonesia about the matter and found evidence suggesting that Beijing had used ASEAN to pressure Jakarta not to buy boats from Taiwan.
The legislator said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Economic Affairs had told her they had not heard anything about the matter.
Meanwhile, Huang Ming-cheng (黃明正), the owner of Shing Sheng Fa Boat Building Company (新昇發造船廠) in Kaohsiung, told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) that his company had made numerous fiberglass-reinforced-polyester boats for Indonesian fisheries in the past at an average price of NT$30 million (US$1 million) per unit, but that his Indonesian customers had not placed any orders recently because of pressure from China.
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