Taipei threatened to take China to the WTO yesterday after Beijing said it would suspend wax apple and custard apple imports from Taiwan due to pest concerns.
China’s customs administration earlier yesterday said it had repeatedly found pests called Planococcus minor, a type of mealybug, on wax and custard apples from Taiwan.
It asked its Guangdong branch and all affiliated offices to stop clearing the products from today.
Photo: CNA
China had acted unilaterally, without providing scientific evidence, Council of Agriculture (COA) Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) told a news conference, criticizing the announcement’s timing, as it came during the Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated in Taiwan and China.
“We cannot accept this,” Chen said, adding that his office had only received notice of China’s decision at 9am yesterday.
Taiwan has told China that it would take the matter to the WTO if Beijing does not respond to Taipei’s request to resolve the issue under their existing bilateral framework before Thursday next week, he added.
The council would earmark NT$1 billion (US$36.05 million) to help promote domestic sales of wax and custard apples, and expand their sales to other overseas markets, Chen said.
Other measures would include extending the harvest time for the fruits, which usually begins in December, to enable farmers to sell them for a longer period, he added.
The mealybug in question is present in many Asian countries, Chen said, adding that as they are usually found on the surface of fruits, a common practice by the importing country is to fumigate the fruit with methyl bromide, so the shipments can clear customs.
During the first half of this year, China notified Taiwan about mealybugs found in 13 shipments of custard apples and six shipments of wax apples, but did not provide any scientific proof, Chen said, adding that there had been no reports of mealybugs in July and last month.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) condemned the move on Facebook last night, saying that the government would assist and protect farmers in the face of the “unreasonable market interference.”
The Mainland Affairs Council said China’s arbitrary move not only failed to comply with WTO and international trade rules, but also damaged the normal cross-strait trade mechanism.
The move should cast doubt over China’s application last week to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) wrote on Twitter.
According to the COA, Taiwan produces 57,000 tonnes of custard apples and about 47,000 tonnes of wax apples each year. They are grown mainly in Kaohsiung, and Taitung and Pingtung counties.
About 90 percent of the exports of the two fruits are shipped to China, accounting for 23 percent of Taiwan’s total production of custard apples and 10 percent of its wax apples, COA data showed.
Taitung County Council Speaker Rao Ching-ling (饒慶鈴) urged farmers not to panic, adding that the county government would continue assisting them in exterminating pests, as well as working with the central government to promote their products in other countries.
Pingtung County Commissioner Pan Men-an (潘孟安) said that while his county is the nation’s biggest wax apple producer, China’s ban would have a limited effect, as its wax apple exports to China on average make up less than 10 percent of its total wax apple production.
Yesterday was the second time this year that China has halted fruit imports from Taiwan.
Claiming that repeatedly seized pineapple shipments from Taiwan carried “perilous organisms,” China on March 1 suspended pineapple imports from Taiwan.
Taiwan accused Beijing of playing politics and the COA spent NT$1 billion to promote pineapple sales at home and abroad.
COA data last month showed that pineapple growers have subsequently fared better, with shipments to Japan surging more than eight times to 16,556 tonnes in the four months through June from a year earlier.
Additional reporting by Yang Chun-hui,
Huang Ming-tang and Lo Hsin-chen
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS