The legislature is failing to fulfill its mandate to monitor regulations concerning relations across the Taiwan Strait and should play a more active role in the area, members of the Cross-Strait Agreement Watch Alliance, an organization comprised of more than 30 groups in Taiwan, said yesterday.
Two executive orders concerning investment by Chinese businesses in Taiwan, which the Legislative Yuan’s General Assembly referred to the Economics Committee in October last year, might have been illegal, alliance convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) told a press conference at the legislature yesterday morning.
The deadline for the committee to review the two orders — the Measures Governing Investment Permit to the People of the Mainland Area (大陸地區人民來台投資許可辦法) and the Regulations Governing Permission for People from the Mainland Area to Invest in Taiwan (大陸地區之營利事業在台設立分公司或辦事處許可辦法) — is Oct. 8.
The committee has held one session in the legislature so far to discuss the regulations with officials, but the contents of the orders were never discussed in detail, Lai said.
“The committee deserves the harshest criticism for its indolence. If the regulations fail to pass the committee by the deadline, they will automatically come into force,” Lai said.
Taiwan Association for Human Rights secretary-general Tsai Chi-hsun (蔡季勳) said that because cross-strait investments are very complicated, the regulations should be reviewed by the legislature.
“Regulations at the executive order level are not enough,” Tsai said. “We have different laws regarding trade relations with other countries, and cross-strait trade relations are no less complicated. There needs to be laws, not just executive orders.”
If the two laws do not go through legislative review, the executive will be in a position to decide at its discretion which sectors can be opened to Chinese investment and to ease restrictions on employment of Chinese workers in Taiwan, Taiwan Labor Front director Chang Feng-yi (張峰益) said.
The government has yet to clearly explain which categories of Chinese employees may be allowed to work in Taiwan, or how long they could stay, Chang said.
“According to official figures, more than 100,000 people in managerial positions at Chinese companies came to Taiwan last year,” Chang said.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pan Men-an (潘孟安), a member of the Economics Committee, said that if a DPP legislator were selected as convener of the committee, “we would review the two sets of regulations during committee meetings.”
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chang Chia-chun (張嘉郡), also a member of the committee, said the alliance should have raised the issue earlier if it really cared about the matter, rather than bring it up “right before deadline.”
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