China last week announced that Taiwan’s ban on imports of certain Chinese goods constituted a “trade barrier.” Some say they worry the announcement would affect the nation’s Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) application. Beijing’s next move is unclear, but the Chinese trade report is unlikely to affect Taiwan’s participation in the trade agreement.
Some say China could block Taiwan’s trade bloc entry by pressuring one or two members, using trade-barrier probes as leverage. This is overthinking it.
First, everyone knows China does not want Taiwan to join the CPTPP. It would try to block Taiwan’s entry with or without the report. Taiwan’s trade bloc eligibility is not a concern.
Beijing employs its “one China” policy to interfere in Taiwan’s participation in international organizations. However, if it uses the trade barrier report as a pretext to keep Taiwan out of the CPTPP, its “one China” reasoning would be weakened.
Second, it is dubious such a trade barrier exists. Would Taiwan’s policy be seen as a contravention of WTO and Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement regulations? Beijing cannot unilaterally determine this.
So, if China uses the trade barrier report against Taiwan at the CPTPP, current members, including Canada, Japan, the UK and Australia, would require it to bring the case to the WTO, rather than taking what Beijing says at face value.
The trade barrier report and Taiwan’s application to the CPTPP might not be as related as some believe.
Apparently, the report runs on for 24 pages, discussing trade procedure and controversial issues, but China’s rules on trade barriers are vague and general. The ways that the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has conducted its trade investigations on Taiwan and the US have been careless and problematic.
In Taiwan’s case, Chinese officials did not even consult with their Taiwanese counterparts. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said that questionnaires were sent out to gather opinions from industrial sectors, but it is unclear when they were distributed. A report on the 183 questionnaires was provided, but China never revealed those industries’ or associations’ names.
In short, the ongoing discussions on China’s trade barrier report are irrelevant at best, and self-incriminating at worst. Those who talk about the report in an eloquent way might have misunderstood it from the outset.
When it comes to international trade, a great number of documents on investigations are available, but they are replete with incomplete information and lack transparency, just like the one China provided. These reports are questionable due to their inconsistencies and the predictability throughout the investigations. Thus, their conclusions cannot be considered valid.
Moreover, the report is not credible due to the timing of the investigation, the close collaboration between China’s commerce ministry and its Taiwan Affairs Office, and the overt and covert threats Beijing poses.
The trade barrier report is another tool of “economic duress” China uses to intimidate Taiwan.
Taiwan’s most urgent task is economic de-risking to mitigate China’s economic threats, which always occur during election run-ups. Meanwhile, to allay China’s economic intimidation, Taiwan must further collaborate with the US, Japan and other G7 countries. As for joining the CPTPP, Taiwan should call out China’s move to CPTPP members, who would agree that what Beijing has done goes against the values and spirit of the trade agreement.
Yen Huai-shing is deputy executive director of the Taiwan WTO & RTA Center at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research.
Translated by Emma Liu
The Cabinet on Nov. 6 approved a NT$10 billion (US$318.4 million) four-year plan to build tourism infrastructure in mountainous areas and the south. Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) on Tuesday announced that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications would offer weekday accommodation discounts, birthday specials and other domestic travel incentives beginning next March, aiming to encourage more travel outside the usual weekend and holiday peaks. The government is right to focus on domestic tourism. Although the data appear encouraging on the surface — as total domestic trips are up compared with their pre-COVID-19 pandemic numbers — a closer look tells a different
For more than seven decades, the Chinese Communist Party has claimed to govern Tibet with benevolence and progress. I have seen the truth behind the slogans. I have listened to the silences of monks forbidden to speak of the Dalai Lama, watched the erosion of our language in classrooms, and felt the quiet grief of a people whose prayers are monitored and whose culture is treated as a threat. That is why I will only accept complete independence for Tibet. The so-called “autonomous region” is autonomous in name only. Decisions about religion, education and cultural preservation are made in Beijing, not
Apart from the first arms sales approval for Taiwan since US President Donald Trump took office, last month also witnessed another milestone for Taiwan-US relations. Trump signed the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act into law on Tuesday. Its passing without objection in the US Senate underscores how bipartisan US support for Taiwan has evolved. The new law would further help normalize exchanges between Taiwanese and US government officials. We have already seen a flurry of visits to Washington earlier this summer, not only with Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), but also delegations led by National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu
I recently watched a panel discussion on Taiwan Talks in which the host rightly asked a critical question: Why is the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) spearheading a robust global movement to reject China’s ongoing distortion of UN Resolution 2758? While the discussion offered some context, a more penetrating analysis and urgent development was missed. The IPAC action is not merely a political gesture; it is an essential legal and diplomatic countermeasure to China’s escalating and fundamentally baseless campaign to manufacture a claim over Taiwan through the deliberate misinterpretation of a 1971 UN resolution. Since the inauguration of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) as
RSS