Last Tuesday's protest against Chinese imports was the second time Huang Shiu-chen (
Taiwan's accession to the WTO in January 2002 has increased the vulnerability of domestic industries to cheap imports over the past four years, prompting Huang to come forward to voice her discontent with the government.
"The WTO has worsened the plight of farmers in my village, and now I worry all the time that I could lose my job" Huang said, noting that the towel factory she has been working in for 30 years is now on the brink of closing down.
"I feel that the government hasn't done much to take care of us," she added.
Lin Yi-nan (
While acknowledging that not all of the pitfalls of WTO membership could be avoided, the government should have taken steps to protect its weaker industries against competition from abroad, rather than just waiting to see how they coped with the situation by themselves, Lin said.
Last Tuesday's protest was organized by towel manufacturers and attended by their counterparts from the ceramics, furniture, and hosiery industries, who accused the government of giving no warning before opening up the local market to foreign imports.
"We were caught unawares by a sudden, disruptive flood of China-made ceramic sanitary wares," said Chen Chien-hung (陳建宏), a deputy secretary-general of a ceramic factory located in Yingge, Taipei County.
Since Chinese products were allowed into the country last July, Chen said that his factory has lost as much as NT$3million (US$92,735) a month. He says that Chinese products undercut local ones by about one-fifth, on average.
In order to comply with its WTO commitments, Taiwan eliminated import controls on over 99 percent of 10,912 official import product categories, with the other categories, which are mostly agricultural, either requiring special import permits or being otherwise restricted.
The fact that local manufacturers were given little or no warning that the local market was being opened left them no time to develop strategies that would help them to compete, Lin said.
Cheap labor and land costs gives China huge export advantages, a thorny problem faced not only by Taiwan, but other countries as well, said Liu Da-nien (劉大年), a research fellow at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research.
"Although protesters are demanding that the government enact safeguard measures to protect local industries, the more imperative thing is for the government to encourage and assist the industries to upgrade," Liu said.
In the case of the towel industry, the government neither informed local manufacturers of its plans to allow competition from China, nor helped them to compete, industry insiders say.
"We never expected towels made in China to be allowed in so soon. Former Economic Affairs Minister Ho Mei-yueh (
Hsu said that the minister's apology wasn't accompanied by any real assistance.
"The government lifted the ban on Chinese towel imports on Feb.15, 2002, but it didn't meet with us to discuss ways to promote our competitiveness until October last year," Hsu said.
Hsu said that meeting came as a result of the association requesting the government enact safeguard measures on Aug. 24, by which point the market share of Chinese towels had surged to 70 percent, from 45.54 percent in 2002.
"Although the government has a task force in charge of regularly reviewing the impact of Chinese imports on local industries, it didn't appreciate the difficulties we were having until we asked for help," Hsu said.
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