A Hong Kong academic said yesterday that Taiwan will benefit from signing the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) because it would open the world market for Taiwanese products through China as an operations platform.
From a global economics perspective, all bilateral trade benefits both sides, said Kwok Yun Kwong (郭潤江), an assistant professor in Hong Kong Baptist University’s economics department.
“As part of the global industrial chain, Taiwan can use China as a platform to push its products in the world market under the stimulation of the ECFA,” Kwok said.
Under the ECFA, signed in Chongqing, China, yesterday, Taiwan will benefit more than China, as the Chinese market is so much larger than Taiwan’s, he said.
In addition, the initial benefits are heavily skewed toward Taiwanese businesses, he said, because the “early harvest” lists of each side, scheduled to come into force Jan. 1, allow 539 items of Taiwanese exports to China worth about US$13.8 billion per year to receive zero tariff treatment for two years, while Chinese exporters will gain similar treatment for 267 items worth US$2.9 billion in exports to Taiwan each year.
Kwok said the ECFA would help shore up Taiwan’s overall economic growth and would help Taiwanese industries to excel.
Taiwan’s GDP would grow remarkably because of the ECFA, but it would also become more reliant on the Chinese market, Kwok said.
Kwok said the adverse impact on some Taiwanese sectors would be temporary, and in the long run the pact would help industries become more competitive.
Meanwhile, Wang Jianmin (王建民), a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Science, said the ECFA encompasses content and influence much more far-reaching than those carried in the previous 12 agreements that Taiwan and China have signed in the past two years.
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