Taiwanese farmers declared only one China-bound agricultural project last year, showing that interest in China’s farming sector has cooled, the Council of Agriculture said in a report.
The council compiled the report in response to legislators’ request last year that officials evaluate whether the nation’s agricultural trade secrets are being compromised by Taiwanese farmers working in China.
From 1991 to last year, Taiwan invested US$6.95 billion in Chinese agriculture — broadly defined to include processed products such as food, beverages and leather — through 5,486 investment projects, according to a copy of the report shown by a source to the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper).
When limiting agriculture to farming, animal husbandry and forestry in the period, Taiwan’s investments from that period were valued at US$524 million in 573 investment projects, mostly taking place in the Chinese provinces of Fujian, Hainan and Shandong, it said.
Beijing in 1997 began courting Taiwanese farmers and investors with the establishment of the Cross-Strait Agricultural Cooperation Experimental Zone, it said, adding that other incentives would be enacted in following years.
Recent examples of investment incentives targeting Taiwan included a program to hire agricultural technical advisers and the so-called “22 forestry and farming measures” promulgated in March last year, it said.
Taiwanese farmers and investors reported 210 investments connected to the making of unprocessed agricultural products in China in 1997, the highest level ever recorded, it said.
The figure dropped to 27 investments in 2002 and 54 investments in 2003, before going through a precipitous decline, it said, adding that the number of investments never exceed eight projects between 2004 to 2019.
However, the amount Taiwan invested in Chinese agriculture — defined as the production of unprocessed agricultural goods — surged to US$80 million in 2020, the highest level ever, it said.
This growth was driven by the technology sector’s involvement in intensive hog farming in China, it said.
Taiwan made 132 patent applications for plant cultivars in China, but only 39, which concerned butterfly orchids, were granted as of last year, it said.
Chinese farmers began cultivating Taiwan’s “Tainung 17” pineapple and several other products following Beijing’s ban on Taiwanese pineapples, but China’s agricultural techniques remain inferior, it said.
Protection of Taiwanese tea cultivars is not possible, as each one is already being grown in China, it said.
China’s business environment is becoming increasingly less attractive due to its trade dispute with the US and its decoupling from the global supply chain, which could trigger an economic downturn, National Taiwan University (NTU) agronomy professor Woo Rhung-jieh (吳榮杰) said.
Intellectual property and patents have long been a source of difficulty when foreigners invest in China, a problem that is likely to persist due to the country’s weak rule of law, NTU agronomy professor Warren Kuo (郭華仁) said.
“China continually changes its policy, and Taiwanese are cheated often enough to know that the rules are rigged. Therefore, they avoid investing in the country,” he said.
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