Former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) and a large delegation of Taiwanese business leaders leave Washington this weekend after conducting high level talks on Taiwan’s relationship with China and its need to expand trade ties with the US.
The group is visiting San Francisco before returning home on Wednesday.
While no details have been released, Siew met privately with members of the US Congress, with US Trade Representative Michael Froman, Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury Marisa Lago and with officials from the US State Department.
Earlier in New York, they met with decisionmakers from top US companies and financial institutions including JPMorgan Chase and Co, Citigroup Inc, Corning Inc and BlackRock Inc.
Siew made one major public address on Taiwan’s need to enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations and gave one interview to the Wall Street Journal.
In the interview, Siew said that Taiwan was not ready for political dialogue with Beijing and there was a need to take care of “economic matters first, before we take care of the political ones.”
He said much work remained to be done, including wrapping up agreements on trade in services, commodities and goods, as well as establishing a dispute settlement mechanism.
“When we can finish this whole project, we can then institutionalize and normalize the trade relationship between Taiwan and China,” Siew told the Wall Street Journal.
He said Taiwan was a democratic society and that the opinion of the general population — as reflected through polls — was that it was still “too premature for us to deal with sensitive and political issues at this juncture.”
As Siew and his party were leaving Washington, the Jamestown Foundation published a paper by Asia writer David Cohen, which said Taiwan’s trade agreements with Singapore and Japan should “calm fears” of China’s economic domination.
“While China has apparently given its blessing to Taiwan to strike trade deals independently, it has also been applying pressure for talks about the island’s political status, as well as pushing for further economic cooperation,” Cohen said in the paper.
“But the mainland appears to be unable or unwilling to interfere with Taiwan’s seeking alternatives — likely calculating that to do so would cost it the political influence it has gained with trade agreements in recent years,” the paper said.
Cohen said that even as China seeks to expand its economic integration with Taiwan it has not stopped the nation from seeking alternative markets.
“While China is a vast and attractive trading partner, its previous efforts to deploy economic coercion have been unimpressive,” he said.
“In order for it to use trade as an effective political weapon, China will have to be not only important but indispensable,” Cohen added.
Trips for more than 100,000 international and domestic air travelers could be disrupted as China launches a military exercise around Taiwan today, Taiwan’s Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) said yesterday. The exercise could affect nearly 900 flights scheduled to enter the Taipei Flight Information Region (FIR) during the exercise window, it added. A notice issued by the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration showed there would be seven temporary zones around the Taiwan Strait which would be used for live-fire exercises, lasting from 8am to 6pm today. All aircraft are prohibited from entering during exercise, it says. Taipei FIR has 14 international air routes and
Taiwan lacks effective and cost-efficient armaments to intercept rockets, making the planned “T-Dome” interception system necessary, two experts said on Tuesday. The concerns were raised after China’s military fired two waves of rockets during live-fire drills around Taiwan on Tuesday, part of two-day exercises code-named “Justice Mission 2025.” The first wave involved 17 rockets launched at 9am from Pingtan in China’s Fujian Province, according to Lieutenant General Hsieh Jih-sheng (謝日升) of the Office of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Intelligence at the Ministry of National Defense. Those rockets landed 70 nautical miles (129.6km) northeast of Keelung without flying over Taiwan,
City buses in Taipei and New Taipei City, as well as the Taipei MRT, would on Saturday begin accepting QR code payments from five electronic payment providers, the Taipei Department of Transportation said yesterday. The new option would allow passengers to use the “transportation QR code” feature from EasyWallet, iPass Money, iCash Pay, Jkopay or PXPay Plus. Passengers should open their preferred electronic payment app, select the “transportation code” — not the regular payment code — unlock it, and scan the code at ticket readers or gates, General Planning Division Director-General Liu Kuo-chu (劉國著) said. People should move through the
The Ministry of National Defense (MND) today released images of the military tracking China’s People's Liberation Army (PLA) movements during the latest round of Chinese drills around Taiwan. The PLA began "Justice Mission 2025" drills today, carrying out live-fire drills, simulated strikes on land and maritime targets, and exercises to blockade the nation's main ports. The exercises are to continue tomorrow, with the PLA announcing sea and air space restrictions for five zones around Taiwan for 10 hours starting from 8:30am. The ministry today released images showing a Chinese J-16 fighter jet tracked by a F-16V Block 20 jet and the
RSS