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.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
NO CONFIDENCE MOTION? The premier said that being toppled by the legislature for defending the Constitution would be a democratic badge of honor for him Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday announced that the Cabinet would not countersign the amendments to the local revenue-sharing law passed by the Legislative Yuan last month. Cho said the decision not to countersign the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) was made in accordance with the Constitution. “The decision aims to safeguard our Constitution,” he said. The Constitution stipulates the president shall, in accordance with law, promulgate laws and issue mandates with the countersignature of the head of the Executive Yuan, or with the countersignatures of both the head of the Executive Yuan and ministers or
CABINET APPROVAL: People seeking assisted reproduction must be assessed to determine whether they would be adequate parents, the planned changes say Proposed amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法) advanced yesterday by the Executive Yuan would grant married lesbian couples and single women access to legal assisted reproductive services. The proposed revisions are “based on the fundamental principle of respecting women’s reproductive autonomy,” Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) quoted Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君), who presided over a Cabinet meeting earlier yesterday, as saying at the briefing. The draft amendment would be submitted to the legislature for review. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, which proposed the amendments, said that experts on children’s rights, gender equality, law and medicine attended cross-disciplinary meetings, adding that
RSS