Some businesses and academics are complaining that they were coerced to endorse an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) the government seeks to sign with Beijing, Soochow University professor Luo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said yesterday.
Luo, who doubles as chief executive of Taiwan Brain Trust, said that when the think tank talked with businesspeople, trade unions and industrial groups, some complained they were “threatened” or “lured by the promise of gain” to support an ECFA or refrain from expressing their concerns over the pact.
It was clear that some academics wrote research papers to toe the government line or did so under pressure of self-censorship, he said.
Some China-based Taiwanese firms even opposed an ECFA, but did not dare publicly oppose it because they worried the administration or Beijing would react, he said.
“They told us they are very happy to see the Democratic Progressive Party oppose the pact,” Luo told reporters.
The government hopes to sign the proposed pact during the first half of this year. The second round of official negotiations is scheduled for later this month in Taipei. The administration claims the accord would boost GDP by nearly 1.7 percent and create more than a quarter million jobs.
Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Deputy Minister Kao Charng (高長), meanwhile, said the government had launched a promotional campaign to advertise an ECFA and that the public had responded positively to the pact.
MAC Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said the government had spent at least NT$900,000 promoting an ECFA, about half of which went to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers organizing promotional events.
Kao said an ECFA would increase Taiwan’s reliance on China economically, adding, however, that the government hoped the pact would motivate other countries to develop closer economic ties with Taiwan.
“We are cautiously optimistic about the prospects,” he said, “but it will take time to find out” if the results meet our expectations.
Kao said other countries would likely stand up to China if they considered their economic interests were being jeopardized should China seek to discourage them from signing free-trade agreements with Taiwan.
He said it was difficult to determine the potential impact of the pact because it was contingent on the scope and extent of the opening of the local market.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs said about 17 industrial sectors, or 100,000 employees, would be affected by the accord. A study conducted by the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research showed that about 80,000 people would be affected.
Kao said China is Taiwan’s biggest export market and that more rules would not stop businesses from investing in China, but rather discourage other countries from developing closer ties with Taiwan.
To help firms affected by the planned pact, Kao said the government would allocate NT$95 billion (US$2.98 billion) over 10 years and increase it if necessary. However, he dismissed a suggestion that businesses benefiting from an ECFA pay into the fund, saying it would be hard to determine whether profits resulted from the trade deal.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS