President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday touted the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed between Taiwan and China last month, saying the trade pact had yet to be implemented but its effects could already be felt.
“Aside from the direct benefits of tariff reductions, zero tariffs will lower the costs and increase output value and exports,” Ma said.
After the “early harvest” program comes into force on Jan. 1, Ma said he expected to see the program boost the country’s GDP by 0.4 percent, create more than NT$190 billion (US$5.9 billion) in output value and produce a net employment gain of 600,000.
The early harvest program refers to a list of goods and services that will be subject to immediate tariff concessions or exemptions.
China has agreed to gradually lower tariffs for 539 categories of imports, with an estimated value of US$13.8 billion a year.
Beijing also agreed to open 11 service categories and 18 farming and fishery categories. Chinese exporters, on the other hand, will get a reciprocal deal on 267 items, with an estimated value of US$2.9 billion a year.
Ma said his administration takes care of the interests of not only the high-tech sector and big businesses, but also those of small and medium-size enterprises. Although the 539 categories of traded goods accounted for only 16 percent of China-bound exports, he said they were still conducive to overall economic development.
Meanwhile, the Mainland Affairs Council yesterday said the next round of cross-strait high-level talks would be held in Taiwan later this year and focus on investment protection and cooperation in medicine and hygiene.
It said the two sides would form a cross-strait economic cooperation commission in accordance with the agreement to handle subsequent negotiations, supervision, implementation and evaluation of the ECFA.
The agreement will take effect after the legislature gives it the go-ahead.
The legislature earlier this month held an extraordinary session to review the trade agreement, but the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) boycotted the proceedings after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) majority ignored its call for an article-by-article review and sent the pact straight for a second reading.
Opposition parties argue that the ECFA would increase Taiwan’s economic dependence on China, undermine fragile sectors of the economy as a result of a flood of cheap Chinese products and jeopardize Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Earlier this month, British weekly The Economist wrote that Taiwan’s desire to sign trade agreements with its other trading partners could provide China with the chance for a new form of blackmail over Taiwan.
The magazine said in its July 3 - July 9 edition that it was still not clear whether China would tolerate its other trading partners signing trade agreements with Taiwan after the two sides signed the ECFA.
“This could provide China with the chance for a new form of blackmail over Taiwan,” it said. “Against that, such skulduggery would lose China the goodwill it has bought.”
The report, headlined “Know your customer,” said the fact that China was trying to bribe Taiwan, not browbeat it, was good news, but Taiwanese caution was still warranted.
It said there were good reasons why Taiwan and the West should welcome the deal. However, critics of the trade pact were right about China’s intentions — to win support in Taiwan.
For those who accepted China’s bribes, the report said they should do so warily. It urged Taiwan to be careful that the “secretive way [the] ECFA has been negotiated does not become a model for the future.”
“The Beijing regime has always preferred to clinch deals behind closed doors,” it said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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