Starting today, the nation is to have a new government, but something has happened that challenges the nation’s interactions with China over the past eight years.
As a result of the uncertainty in cross-strait relations due to the upcoming change of power, Taiwan’s exports of farm products to China have shown signs of a slowdown, which is particularly obvious in the sectors that produce soft-shell turtle eggs and grouper, the Chinese-language United Daily News reported yesterday.
The price of soft-shell turtle eggs, regarded as more nutritious than chicken eggs in Chinese society, destined for export to China has plummeted from NT$7 (US$0.21) each to NT$0.3 since early this year, the newspaper quoted Taiwan Soft-Shell Turtle Keepers’ Association chairman Chang Nan-chien (張南進) as saying.
Taiwan exports 150 million soft-shell turtle eggs to China each year, Chang said.
“Early this year, the export price was still NT$7 each, but fell unexpectedly to NT$2.8 in the first two weeks of March,” he said.
Normally wholesalers negotiate a price before dispatching a shipment, Chang said.
However, over the past two weeks, Chinese wholesalers have failed to offer a price, blaming an unresponsive market, he added.
“They waited until Wednesday for the price to settle. Disappointingly, the eventual price was about NT$0.3 per egg,” Chang said, adding that he suspected the cold response to the once-popular Taiwanese product was politics.
“Amid the approaching transition of power, aquaculturists have experienced a decline in orders from China,” Kaohsiung City Aquaculture Association CEO Chen Wen-ko (陳文閣) said.
Kaohsiung aquaculture operators have sold the bulk of their products, mostly grouper, to China over the past few years.
“In the past, in May alone there would normally have been an average of 17 shipments of the fish to China, but this year there have been no shipments this month so far,” Chen said. “The overall number of orders has dropped by at least 50 percent.”
Meanwhile, a pineapple trader in Yunlin County surnamed Wu (吳) said Chinese authorities seem to have raised their standards for pesticide residue on pineapples imported from Taiwan.
In March and last month, shipments of Taiwanese pineapples totaling nearly 100 tonnes were rejected by China because of excessive pesticide residue, Wu said, adding that, in the past, Chinese customs inspectors would only “take a peek” at imported Taiwanese pineapples, but now check shipments on a case-by-case basis.
Some have said that the heightened safety checks are related to the upcoming transition of power in Taiwan, while others have attributed them to the discovery of excessive pesticide residue on pineapples shipped from Taiwan to Xiamen last year, Wu said.
“There are many different rumors going around,” he added.
Taiwan sells about 3,500 tonnes of pineapples to China each year, generating NT$350 million in revenue.
In Pingtung County, fish farms ship about 80,000 tonnes of grouper and 2,000 tonnes of East Asian four-finger threadfin to China for NT$13 billion and NT$48 million per year respectively, the newspaper reported.
Several farm product traders, including Taiwan Cooperative Society of Fruit and Vegetables general manager Lin Hsiao-ping (林曉萍) and Taiwan Farmer United Logistics Corp general manager Yu Tsan-hung (余贊宏), have expressed hope that the new government will keep cross-strait relations unchanged, the newspaper said.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods