Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) yesterday promised that a long-stalled investment protection agreement “will definitely be sealed” at his next meeting with his Chinese counterpart.
Chiang made the remark at a roundtable session with a group of Taiwanese businesspeople based in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin.
The event was held on the sidelines of Chiang’s meeting on Thursday with Beijing’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林). The main purpose of their seventh round of talks was to sign a nuclear safety agreement.
Chiang said only one agreement was signed at each of his most recent meetings with Chen because the two sides had begun handling more difficult issues, having dealt with easier ones earlier on.
The investment protection pact is one of the matters that fall under the terms of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), which was signed in June last year.
After 10 months of negotiations, authorities in Taiwan and China have sorted out most of their differences over the investment pact, Chiang said.
Preliminary results on the issue were reached on Thursday, he said.
The SEF pays great attention to the rights and interests of Taiwanese businesses in China, which tend to face more problems than those operating in Southeast Asia, he said.
In light of this situation, -Chiang said, he has made more than 50 visits to China to meet with Taiwanese businesspeople there to help resolve their problems.
Of the complaints the SEF has received from China-based Taiwanese businesspeople, 195 have been filed in Tianjin and 191 have been resolved, he said.
Negotiations on the investment protection pact were deadlocked for months over a number of issues, including how disputes should be arbitrated and ways to protect Taiwanese businesspeople’s personal safety.
According to Ting Kun-hua (丁鯤華), honorary chairman of the Tianjin Taiwan-Invested Enterprises Association, the main purpose of the agreement would be to ensure the fair arbitration of disputes and it was therefore very important to deal with the agreement cautiously.
He said his association has no problem with the postponement of the signing of the agreement until the next Chiang-Chen meeting to allow more time for discussion.
Meanwhile, Atomic Energy Council Minister Tsai Chuen-horng (蔡春鴻) said in Taipei yesterday the nuclear safety cooperation pact marked the 16th agreement Taiwan has signed with China since the two sides returned to the negotiating table in 2008.
The content of the pact included the establishment of an exchange platform, nuclear emergency management, radiation monitoring, analysis and assessment of nuclear safety, fuel safety, heat transfer and risk evaluation.
According to the nuclear safety pact, accident emergency notification is required if incidents rated two or above on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale occur on either side of the Taiwan Strait.
Information that must be provided includes the name of the power plant, the time of the accident, possible reasons for the accident, whether radioactive substances have leaked, protective measures, the latest situation and possible future effects.
The work plan states that a working group would be formed to negotiate and arrange the working plan and projects in detail and the first meeting should take place within two months of the signing of the pact.
Earlier this week, representatives from environmental groups and a legislator questioned whether the two sides could really deal with nuclear accidents without specific details on accident response methods or compensation principles in the pact.
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