Taiwan should adopt a “pivot to India” strategy to take advantage of the South Asian country’s market potential and decrease its economic dependence on China, former representative to India Philip Ong (翁文祺) said yesterday.
“I would say that for all the strategies about Malaysia, Vietnam and other countries being planned by government agencies, such as the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [MOFA], Taiwan would be better off adopting an ‘India strategy’ because it is be our best option,” Ong said on the sidelines of the inaugural ceremony of an India-Taiwan parliamentary friendship group.
Ong, who served as Taiwan’s representative to India between 2008 and 2012 and is now chairman of Chunghwa Post, said that time is not on the nation’s side, as South Korea — Taiwan’s primary trade competitor — has signed a free-trade agreement (FTA) with India.
As the feasibility study for a Taiwan-India FTA was completed last year, Taipei should step up efforts to pursue closer economic ties with the South Asian economic powerhouse, which “could be ‘the next China’ for Taiwan, and take advantage of its market potential, technology and human resources,” Ong said.
The value of Taiwan-India trade has risen from US$1.11 billion in 2001, to US$6.17 billion now, according to Shambhu Hakki, deputy director of the India-Taipei Association, New Delhi’s official representative office in Taiwan.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Chieh-ju (陳節如), chairman of the bipartisan friendship group of 25 lawmakers, and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said there are more than 400 Indian students in master’s and doctoral programs in Taiwan, as well as thousands of Indian engineers working in local companies.
There is room for improvement in bilateral relations, as Taiwan’s investment in India amounts to a little more than US$1 billion, with fewer than 60,000 Taiwanese tourists visiting there each year, said Benjamin Ho (何登煌), director-general of the MOFA’s Department of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
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