Beijing is touting 12 financial measures to attract Taiwanese investment as benefiting Taiwan, but they are actually aimed at bolstering China’s sluggish economy, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said.
The measures, announced by the People’s Bank of China and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, are designed to support the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee’s and the Chinese State Council’s goal of promoting China’s Fujian Province as a cross-strait integrated development demonstration area, the bank said.
They include pushing for more Taiwanese-funded enterprises in Fujian to be listed on a Chinese stock exchange, and allowing Fujian banks to provide cross-border yuan collection and payment services for Taiwanese who purchase real estate in the province.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
The MAC said that China is facing an economic downturn and deepening deflation, adding that its real-estate market is in recession, investment environment is deteriorating, and many residential and commercial buildings are idle.
Although the CCP says that China’s unilateral measures would benefit Taiwan, the initiatives are only to help China deal with a crashing real-estate market and lift its sluggish economy, it said.
Most of the new measures already exist or are just improvements to current measures, MAC said.
The benefits of China’s cross-strait integration measures to Taiwanese and Taiwanese enterprises are limited, it said.
The efforts are a part of the CCP’s “united front” activities, it said, adding that people should be aware of the risks before participating in the program.
The measures focus on four areas, the first three of which are improving the cross-strait financial environment and providing services to help Taiwanese-funded enterprises develop in China; supporting high standards for cross-border trade in Fuzhou, Xiamen and Quanzhou; and enhancing financial regulation, and preventing and resolving financial risks, China’s central bank said.
The fourth is “supporting the convenience of capital account transactions and financing,” which aims to bolster and improve the Straits Equity Trading Center’s Taiwan funding division, and enhancing cooperation with the National Equities Exchange and Quotations.
It also includes pushing for more qualified Taiwanese-funded enterprises in Fujian to list on a Chinese stock exchange, and encouraging more of those businesses to engage in China’s financial market development.
To optimize financial ecology, banks would be allowed to provide cross-strait yuan collection and payment services to Taiwanese who purchase real-estate property in Fujian, the bank said.
High-standard cross-border trade demonstration projects include making the collection and payment of regular foreign exchange funds more convenient and supporting banks in optimizing new forms of cross-border trade settlement.
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