Sat, Sep 22, 2001 page2

• Accession a historic opportunity

  EGO BOOST Scholars agree that accession to the trade group will boost Taiwan's visibility and its national pride, but many wonder what the tangible benefits will be

  • By Monique Chu / STAFF REPORTER
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  Academics say WTO entry, expected to be finalized next January, will do much to enhance Taipei's political visibility and boost national pride.

  "The accession is of great significance. Taiwan has in many ways been isolated, especially by China. The WTO is the most important organization that has been open to Taiwan in years," said Edward Chen (陳坤耀), a professor of economics at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

  "It's almost like the United Nations, with members from almost 150 countries and economies ... The visibility of Taiwan within the international political arena will be enhanced as a result," said Chen, who was in Taipei yesterday attending a forum on East Asian Regional Development.

  "It doesn't matter whether any concrete results can be generated or short-term benefits are derived. The visibility is of crucial importance to Taiwan," Chen added.

  Wu Rong-i (吳榮義), president of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, offered a similar view.

  "For Taiwan, whose biggest problem is being bullied by China, the political motivation behind its WTO bid was of great significance as Taiwan can use this mechanism to engage and negotiate with some 142 WTO members, enhancing its global visibility," Wu told the Taipei Times.

  "For citizens of Taiwan ... the accession may be a boost to national pride. After all, Taiwan's longstanding isolation from almost all intergovernmental organizations has made people feel that they are not respected," added Wu, who is also a national policy advisor to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

  Another political benefit to be yielded from Taiwan's WTO membership, Wu pointed out, was that Taiwan will perhaps find it easier to access WTO-subsidiaries.

  But scholars downplay the tangable benefits Taiwan might gain from accession, given the recent problems of the multilateral trading group.

  "I am more skeptical of what actual benefits Taiwan will derive from membership given the fact that the WTO itself is now having problems making headway on its own agenda of promoting global trade," Edward Chen said.

  "After Seattle, it seems people have lost interest and that the momentum has gradually dissipated," he added.

  What happened in Seattle has led many to believe that anti-globalization activists and developing countries have gained the upper hand in questioning the WTO system, which they say is dominated by developed countries.

  In a paper presented at the seminar, William Tang (唐瑋麟), an associate research fellow of Taiwan's APEC Study Center, spoke of the institutional crisis of the WTO system.

  Power imbalances between developing and developed countries within the system, argued Tang, could force the system to face a crisis of legitimacy.

  Furthermore, one of the major difficulties of the WTO system is its poor record in trade dispute settlement, Tang argued.

  Despite its Dispute Settlement Mechanism, the WTO saw 234 dispute cases between early 1995 and the middle of last year, with only 39 cases settled or withdrawn, according to Tang.

  The Cambridge-trained scholar said, however, that there was a lesson for Taiwan in the WTO's crisis.

  As for the future of interaction between China and Taiwan under WTO, scholars painted a mixed picture.

  "If leaders in Beijing were willing to play the game based on WTO rules, solutions would come easily as the two sides would sit down and talk when problems arose," Wu said. "But if China intends to allow irrelevant issues to interfere (節外生枝), the whole scenario will become much more complicated.
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