China supports efforts to speedily conclude ongoing negotiations with Taiwan over a trade in goods agreement, but is concerned about uncertainties created by the nation’s legislature, Minister of Economic Affairs Woody Duh (杜紫軍) said on Saturday.
Duh said Chinese Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng (高虎城) promised to speed up trade talks with Taiwan during an hour-long meeting on the sidelines of the APEC ministerial meeting in Beijing.
However, Gao also expressed concerns about the uncertainties surrounding a draft act on supervision of agreements negotiated and signed across the Taiwan Strait, which has been stalled in the Legislative Yuan since April, Duh added.
Taiwan signed the cross-strait service trade pact with China in June last year, subsequent to the 2010 Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA).
With growing public demand for more transparency in cross-strait agreements, the legislature has decided to review the draft act to address the issue before ratifying the service trade pact.
Duh said he responded by suggesting that the two sides should first work on technical issues in their ongoing talks on the trade in goods agreement.
Meanwhile, officials in Taipei said the Ministry of Economic Affairs is ready to return to the table for trade talks with China, even though the stalled legislative process is putting pressure on negotiators.
Taiwan and China held their ninth round of talks over the trade pact in September, and Industrial Development Bureau Director-General Wu Ming-ji (吳明機) said the two sides have agreed to lower import tariffs in five phases.
Taiwan is seeking to include its more competitive flat panel, machine tools, auto and petrochemical sectors in the first phase, he added.
Bureau of Foreign Trade Deputy Director-General David Hsu (徐大衛) said in Taipei that China has slowed down its pace of talks over the goods trade agreement, since the service trade pact has failed to clear the legislature.
Hsu and Wu hope to conclude the goods trade agreement negotiations with China less than six months after China and South Korea wrap up their ongoing free-trade deal talks, but said that the key factor remains the stalled draft act on oversight of cross-strait agreements.
The stalled legislative review of the draft act weighs heavily on trade talk negotiators, because they fear they might again face accusations of “selling out the nation,” through under-the-table deals, as negotiators did in the service trade talks, Wu said.
The first of 10 new high-capacity trains purchased from South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem arrived at the Port of Taipei yesterday to meet the demands of an expanding metro network, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. The train completed a three-day, 1,200km voyage from the Port of Masan in South Korea, the company said. Costing NT$590 million (US$18.79 million) each, the new six-carriage trains feature a redesigned interior based on "human-centric" transportation concepts, TRTC said. The design utilizes continuous longitudinal seating to widen the aisles and optimize passenger flow, while also upgrading passenger information displays and driving control systems for a more comfortable
Taiwan's first indigenous defense submarine, the SS-711 Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), departed for its 13th sea trial at 7am today, marking its seventh submerged test, with delivery to the navy scheduled for July. The outing also marked its first sea deployment since President William Lai (賴清德) boarded the submarine for an inspection on March 19, drawing a crowd of military enthusiasts who gathered to show support. The submarine this morning departed port accompanied by CSBC Corp’s Endeavor Manta (奮進魔鬼魚號) uncrewed surface vessel and a navy M109 assault boat. Amid public interest in key milestones such as torpedo-launching operations and overnight submerged trials,
Quarantine awareness posters at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport have gone viral for their use of wordplay. Issued by the airport branch of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency, the posters feature sniffer dogs making a range of facial expressions, paired with advisory messages built around homophones. “We update the messages for holidays and campaign needs, periodically refreshing materials to attract people’s attention,” quarantine officials said. “The aim is to use the dogs’ appeal to draw focus to quarantine regulations.” A Japanese traveler visiting Taiwan has posted a photo on X of a poster showing a quarantine dog with a
SECURITY RISK: A university student sent a general alarm signal to THSRC’s control center on April 5, causing four operating trains to temporarily halt services The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday pledged to submit a report on ways to harden the communication security of railway systems after a university student hacked into Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp’s (THSRC) radio communications system and disrupted operations of four high-speed rail trains last month. Investigation by the police and prosecutors found that the university student and radio enthusiast, surnamed Lin (林), first used a software-defined radio (SDR) filter to analyze THSRC signals, downloaded the data to a computer, cracked the parameters and then programmed the codes into his radio devices. Lin then sent a general alarm signal to
RSS