The government is continuing to seek free-trade agreements (FTAs) with nations around the world, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, amid media reports that Australia’s plans to sign a trade deal with Taiwan was shelved due to Chinese pressure.
A report in Monday’s edition of the Australian Financial Review newspaper quoted a source as saying that although such a plan remains official Australian government policy, it has been put on hold because Canberra has its hands full doing deals with Hong Kong, Indonesia, the EU, the Pacific Alliance and trying to revive the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The article, titled “China Pressure helped put Taiwan FTA on Hold,” quoted the source as saying that Australia signed a free-trade deal with China in 2015 and it was deemed “polite to leave an elegant distance between the deal with mainland China and doing a deal with Taiwan.”
The paper quoted Australian Senator David Leyonhjelm as warning the Australian government that it should not kowtow to Beijing.
“I’m concerned that the government has caved in to pressure from China and that an FTA with Taiwan is no longer on the agenda. While trade with China will always be greater, we should not abandon our values and principles,” he said.
Foreign ministry spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) did not directly confirm that Chinese pressure is the reason a deal has yet to be signed with Australia, saying only that the government would continue its efforts to sign FTAs with all major trade partners.
“It is our nation’s existing trade and economic policy to sign FTAs with other countries and actively participate in all kinds of regional economic integration initiatives,” he said.
The Australian Office in Taipei said reporters should refer to remarks made by Australian Attorney-General Senator George Brandis in the Australian Senate on Wednesday last week.
“Taiwan is an important economic partner for Australia, and our bilateral relationship continues to expand. The government is open to the possibility of pursuing better market access arrangements and closer economic cooperation with Taiwan,” Brandis said.
Australia recognizes Beijing and “any arrangements” Australia concludes with Taiwan would be consistent with its “one China” policy, he said.
Meanwhile, asked about a FTA with Taiwan in an interview with the Central News Agency on Monday, Australian Office in Taipei Representative Catherine Raper said Canberra is open to the possibility, but it is not currently at the top of its list.
“The Australian government is definitely open to exploring how we can grow our market access through some arrangements between the two of us, but we haven’t yet made a decision to directly go ahead to move into an FTA,” she said.
“We also haven’t made a decision not to. It’s something we keep under review,” she said, adding that it is not something the Australian government is actively pursuing right now.
Taiwan was Australia’s 14th-largest trading partner last year and its eighth-largest export market for the 2016-2017 financial year.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching