President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday renewed his call for the US to sign a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan following US Congress’ approval of an FTA with South Korea on Thursday. He also promoted the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) as a pact that would boost Taiwan’s global competitiveness.
In an interview with TVBS yesterday, Ma said Taiwan would seek to sign a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) with the US as a first step toward the ultimate goal of signing an FTA.
“The US’ FTA with South Korea was signed three years ago and we started preparations back then. Signing the ECFA with China was our solution … China is our largest trade partner and after we signed the ECFA we enjoyed more advantages in the Chinese market than South Korea did,” he said.
On Thursday, the US Congress approved FTAs with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.
Asked about the impact of the FTA with South Korea on Taiwan’s economy, Ma said it would affect traditional business sectors in Taiwan, such as sock manufacturing.
The government will seek more solutions to help those industries weather the impact, he said.
Taiwan has been a major investor in China in recent years, providing more than US$100 billion in financing and technological know-how, estimates show.
However, the two sides will not sign an investment protection agreement to protect Taiwanese businesspeople and their investments in China in the next round of cross-strait talks, scheduled to take place from Wednesday through Friday in China.
Defending the government’s decision to push for closer economic ties with China, Ma said the signing of the ECFA was part of a wider plan to sign economic pacts with other countries, such as Japan and Singapore.
Taiwan and Japan signed an investment protection accord last month and an FTA with Singapore is under negotiation, he said, adding: “Ultimately, we still hope to sign an FTA with the US.”
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift