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
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat