The government last week held two rounds of seminars in Canada as part of its bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday.
The seminars on Wednesday and Friday last week in Calgary and Vancouver respectively were the first such CPTPP promotional events held in Canada outside the capital, Ottawa, Department of International Cooperation and Economic Affairs Director-General Vivian Lien (連玉蘋) said.
Canada is the CPTPP commission chair this year.
Photo: Reuters
The Canadian Global Affairs Institute hosted the Calgary event, titled “Canada-Taiwan Economic Cooperation: Opportunities for Western Canada,” which was co-organized by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada, Lien said.
Ken Hardie, chair of the Canada-China Relations Special Committee of the Canadian House of Commons, and Christy Clark, former premier of British Columbia, said that Taiwan was a reliable partner, pointing out its adherence to high trade standards during the Calgary event, a Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada statement said.
The second seminar, “Bridging Economies: Exploring Canadian - Taiwanese Trade Ventures,” was hosted by the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, Lien said.
She said that Taiwan would continue to pitch to every CPTPP member that its accession would enhance supply chain resilience and benefit global economic security.
Lien has repeatedly said that the government believes this year could be crucial for Taiwan’s bid because Canada is commission chair of the CPTPP.
That offers a “window of opportunity” for Taipei’s potential accession to the trade bloc because of the democratic values shared by Canada and Taiwan, and their robust trade and economic ties, she said.
All decisions by the commission or the accession working group are made by consensus among CPTPP members, as per the bloc’s accession process rules.
Taiwan officially applied to join the CPTPP on Sept. 22, 2021, less than a week after China, but Taipei has made little headway on its bid since then.
The CPTPP, which grew out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that the US left in January 2017, is one of the world’s biggest trade blocs, representing a market of 500 million people and accounting for 13.5 percent of global trade.
Its 11 signatories are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
The UK signed the trade agreement on July 16 last year, and is expected to formally join by the end of this year.
Ecuador, Costa Rica, Uruguay and Ukraine have also applied to join the trade bloc.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
The Chinese military has boosted its capability to fight at a high tempo using the element of surprise and new technology, the Ministry of National Defense said in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) published on Monday last week. The ministry highlighted Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) developments showing significant changes in Beijing’s strategy for war on Taiwan. The PLA has made significant headway in building capabilities for all-weather, multi-domain intelligence, surveillance, operational control and a joint air-sea blockade against Taiwan’s lines of communication, it said. The PLA has also improved its capabilities in direct amphibious assault operations aimed at seizing strategically important beaches,
RSS