The US could invoke a clause in its trade agreement with Canada and Mexico to block China’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a government official said yesterday.
Under Article 32.10 of the Exceptions and General Provisions of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), if either Canada or Mexico enter a free-trade agreement with a nonmarket economy — such as China — the US could withdraw from the agreement.
“If that clause applies to multilateral free-trade agreements such as the CPTPP — which Mexico and Canada are members of — that might be cause for the two countries to oppose China’s membership,” a senior Executive Yuan official said on condition of anonymity.
Photo: Reuters
Echoing an assertion made in an analysis by The Diplomat editor-in-chief Shannon Tiezzi on Friday, the source said that China might see CPTPP membership as a means of circumventing trade restrictions imposed by the US in an ongoing US-China trade dispute.
“However, China is an authoritarian regime that lacks transparency, and its laws and market systems are far removed from those of existing CPTPP members,” the source said. “We will have to wait to see exactly what its intentions are.”
The USMCA was introduced in January last year to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, which had been in place since 1994.
Although the USMCA was signed by former US president Donald Trump, who took a tough stance on China-related issues, US President Joe Biden has not deviated from that position, the source said, adding that the world was waiting to see how the Biden administration would react to China’s CPTPP application.
“China engages in market interference through its state-owned enterprises — that is contrary to how a free-market economy should work,” the source said. “Many CPTPP members have expressed reservations about whether China can meet the agreement’s standards.”
Separately yesterday, National Medical University liberal arts professor Chang Kuo-cheng (張國城) said that concerns that China’s CPTPP bid would affect Taiwan’s own aspirations for membership were unfounded.
Joining the agreement would not be easy for China, and would require approval from all members, he said.
Nevertheless, China’s large economy and political resources would work in its favor in attempting to join, he added.
Additional reporting by Wu Su-wei
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000
RSS