The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said it has asked the Ministry of Economic Affairs to suspend issuing a public notice of an impending export control on shipping chips to South Africa, after Pretoria agreed to talks over a year-long dispute regarding Taiwan’s office in the country.
The economics ministry on Tuesday announced that it would implement new export controls requiring prior approval for 47 products — including ICs and chips — shipped to South Africa, to be effective from late November.
It must submit the notice to be published on the Cabinet’s online gazette system two months before the export controls take effect.
Photo: Ritchie B. Tong, EPA
The restrictions were meant as a countermeasure following South Africa’s repeated downgrading and renaming of Taiwan’s representative offices in the country, actions that Taipei believes were taken amid Chinese pressure.
However, the economics ministry yesterday said the notice was only being put on its own bulletin system, and it would not submit it to the Cabinet’s online gazette system for the time being after consulting with the foreign affairs ministry.
MOFA in a separate statement said that it asked the economics ministry to suspend submitting the notice to the Cabinet’s system, after the South African government told it that it wished to engage in talks with Taiwan over the office dispute.
The South African government last year began a unilateral push to categorize Taiwan’s representative office, officially named the Taipei Liaison Office in the Republic of South Africa, as a “trade office” and move it from Pretoria, its administrative capital, to the commercial capital, Johannesburg.
It initially set a deadline of October last year before extending it to the end of March.
MOFA protested the move, calling for talks, but Pretoria has yet to respond to Taipei’s demands.
The South African side in early March unilaterally changed the name of the Taipei office on its Department of International Relations and Cooperation Web site from the “Taipei Liaison Office” to the “Taipei Commercial Office.”
On July 21, the department announced the renaming and downgrading of Taiwan’s main representative office in Pretoria and a branch office in Cape Town.
South Africa changed the main office name to the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the branch office name to “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town,” and began referring to them as “international organizations” instead of “a foreign representation in South Africa.”
Despite the South African government’s unilateral decisions, Taiwan’s representative office in South Africa is maintaining normal operations in Pretoria and continues to provide necessary services to its nationals.
Taiwan has said that China was behind Pretoria’s decision to ask the Taipei office to relocate and rename, citing UN Resolution 2758 and Beijing’s “one China” principle.
Resolution 2758, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1971, recognized the People’s Republic of China as “the only lawful representatives of China” to the international body, and expelled “the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” (蔣介石) from the UN. It does not mention Taiwan.
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