The global trend is toward “de-risking” relations with China, Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said yesterday, in response to calls by opposition parties to restart talks on a proposed cross-strait service trade agreement.
Previous talks on the proposed pact resulted in “several hundred thousand Taiwanese standing up in protest,” Chen said, referring to the Sunflower movement of 2014.
Today, Taiwan hopes to follow the global trend of de-risking with China, and “not putting all of its eggs in one basket,” he said.
Photo: Screenshot from Liberty Times’ YouTube
De-risking is especially important for Taiwan given US-China tensions, and Taiwan’s desire to boost economic cooperation with other countries, Chen said.
Chen made the remarks after Taiwan People’s Party Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who is running for president, raised the proposal at a recent event. New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), who is the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate, has also expressed support for the proposal.
The proposed agreement, which China and the then-KMT government signed in 2013, aimed to liberalize trade and investment rules between the two economies in service industries including finance, tourism, healthcare, telecoms and publishing.
However, the KMT’s efforts to hastily ratify the pact in the legislature set off a three-week, student-led sit-in protest in the legislature, which led to the agreement being shelved.
Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said that if the proposed pact were approved, large numbers of Chinese companies would establish local branches in Taiwan, which would likely hire Chinese employees, and would not help local employment.
The goal of any such trade or service agreement would be the complete integration of Taiwan’s economy with China’s, he said.
Chinese agricultural and industrial products would also be dumped on Taiwan, which would greatly harm Taiwanese farmers and manufacturing firms, he said.
“The result of economic integration would be to bring the economic risks of China closer to Taiwan, while forcing Taiwan to remain on its old path of economic dependence on China,” he said.
Vice President William Lai (賴清德), who is the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, on Sunday said that those proposing to restart talks on the service trade pact “do not understand current international trends.”
“Taiwan’s current economic and industrial structure is completely different from what it was when the agreement was first discussed 10 years ago,” he said. “To enter into such an agreement today would be very detrimental to Taiwan.”
Asked about the pact, Hou on Sunday said that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait should resume pragmatic exchanges and dialogue on cooperation in education, culture, and in trade and the economy, including through the cross-strait service trade agreement.”
During a radio interview yesterday, Ko said that talks on the agreement should be preceded by supervisory regulations, and that “the trade in goods must precede the trade in services,” because the former would present “fewer problems involving people, and is therefore easier to deal with.”
Additional reporting by Tang Shih-ming, Huang Tzu-yang and CNA
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