Monday, March 03, 2008

Taiwan-El Salvador FTA Takes Effect

El Salvador's Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Taiwan came into effect on March 1. AFP reports:

El Salvador on Saturday launched a free trade pact with Taiwan, its first such deal with a partner outside the Americas.

President Elias Antonio Saca called the deal historic and argued it would give this small Central American nation new access to the highly competitive Asian market.

The official launch ceremony was held at a plant outside the Salvadoran capital set up with capital from Taiwan, with Taiwan's Ambassador Carlos Liao on hand.

Taiwan has sought to cultivate diplomatic ties with Central and South American states as it vies with China for international recognition.

Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war and have since argued over which is the rightful government, with Beijing regarding the island as part of the mainland awaiting reunification.

The Taipei Times described the FTA last year:

Under the FTA's framework, Steve Chen said that El Salvador would enjoy tariff-free privileges for sugar exports up to 35,000 tonnes for the first year.

The amount will increase to 50,000 tonnes of sugar for the second year and 60,000 tonnes for the third.

Taiwan's consumes 500,000 tonnes to 600,000 tonnes of sugar per year, with approximately 60,000 tonnes coming from local suppliers and the rest mostly from Thailand and Australia.

Steve Chen said tariff-free sugar imports from El Salvador would not jeopardize local sugar cane farmers because the government has a purchasing system in place to protect their interests.

Because El Salvador is a member of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), which took effect in El Salvador in March last year, Steven Chen said that Taiwanese businesses operating in El Salvador were entitled to trade benefits with the US.

DR-CAFTA includes the US, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.

Signing FTAs helps lower prices and increase trade volume, Steve Chen said.

In addition to sugar, he said there was plenty of room for imports of El Salvadoran coffee. Taiwan's coffee imports totaled US$32 million last year, with US$3 million, or 11 percent coming from Central American countries.

The Taiwan-El Salvador FTA covers agriculture, manufacturing and the service sector.

Taiwan Journal noted the importance of sugar quotas in both this FTA and in Central American-Taiwan relations in an article last year as well:

Chen noted that Saca was originally supposed to visit Taiwan to sign a free-trade agreement, but that the ceremony had to be canceled because negotiators had reached an impasse with regard to sugar export quotas. The president held up the FTA talks as an example to illustrate how the two sides have similar problems. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya Rosales, Chen reminded his guest, ordered his country's negotiators to put aside their differences with Taiwan in order to speed up the signing of an ROC-Honduras FTA.

Saca stressed that El Salvador had had high expectations for its FTA with Taiwan, but the sugar export quotas demanded by the Taiwanese negotiators would have affected job opportunities and agricultural production technology in his country. He hoped the two countries could find a solution to the issue and reach a consensus.

Chen and Saca, accompanied by government officials from the two countries, visited the Tainan Science Park Oct. 19, where they attended a briefing on the park's development and visited several high-tech companies, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. and Chi Mei Corp., which makes computer monitors.

Tai Chien of the National Science Council spoke about plans to build a Taiwan science park in El Salvador. He said Saca's visit was a positive sign that El Salvador would come to better understand Taiwan's high-tech industry. Taiwanese efforts to transplant the science park experience can not only help its allies, but also provide new investment opportunities for Taiwanese companies, Tai added.

FTAs with central American nations also help Taiwan in that they can be used as an export base for the American market. For that reason China has also targeted relations with these nations.

MEDIA NOTE: AFP appears to be living in an alternate reality on the Taiwan Question:
Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war and have since argued over which is the rightful government, with Beijing regarding the island as part of the mainland awaiting reunification.
Not only does this repeat the erroneous formulation that "Taiwan and China" split (the KMT and the CPP split; Taiwan was owned by Japan in 1949) but it adds, incredibly, that Taiwan and China spar over who rules China. Taiwan renounced claims to China almost twenty years ago.... now the debate is over whether Taiwan should be annexed to China. And of course, the media tell us what Beijing thinks of Taiwan, but never what Taiwan thinks of Beijing.

8 comments:

Tim Maddog said...

Simple observation of AFP reports over time should make it obvious that it is their policy to promote these lies. Readers who haven't seen this page -- on which I've collected countless examples of the "split in 1949" lie -- should do so now.

Tim Maddog

Anonymous said...

Read below my query to the AFP site:

Below is a summary of your request, if everything is correct, please click -submit-

What you would like to do?: Contact news department

(All AFP-requested personal data withheld here to protect my privacy.)


Details of your request: Why Taiwan and China never split? ‘Cause they were never conjoined as far back as 1895, that’s why!!

“Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war and have since argued over which is the rightful government, with Beijing regarding the island as part of the mainland awaiting reunification.”

The above quoted from your http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080301/tbs-salvador-taiwan-trade-5268574.html

I am tired of reading that “Taiwan and China split in 1949” or that “Taiwan lost its UN sit to PRC in 1971”

Taiwan has nothing to do with China.

It was the US-backed Republic of China (ROC) under the failed Chinese fascist dictator Chiang Kai-shek that lost China to the People Republic of China (PRC) and exiled itself on then de jure Japanese territory (1895-1952) of Formosa (Taiwan).

In 1949, Taiwan remained Japanese territory, albeit occupied by ROC/KMT troops since October 25, 1945. These occupation forces from China under the responsibility of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had been ferried from the Chinese coast to Taiwan on US Navy ships on behalf of the allied victors in the US-lead Pacific War against Imperial Japan.

Unlike Japan proper – that remained under US occupation from fall of 1945 until the SFPT of September 8, 1951 entered into effect on April 28, 1952 – Formosa (Taiwan) remains to this day under US Military Government (USMG) administration deceitfully propping the ROC as its civil government arm on Taiwan.

In 1964, then (SFPT signatory) France’s Prime minister Georges Pompidou, commented in a NY Times interview piece that sovereignty over Taiwan remained an unsettled question under San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951.

So, please check your archives and make them available to your rookies and stringers.

For a proper understanding of the international legal status of Taiwan and ROC, please refer to the following key words : October 25, 1945; Retrocession Day (a ROC Chinese hoax perpetuated by PRC authorities); San Francisco Peace Treaty; Treaty of Taipei; Taiwan cession under SFPT, Civil government under USMG, Mutual Defence Treaty (MDT), Taiwan Relation Act (TRA).

Not convinced? Then, humbly research further. Meanwhile, save the following and make it available to your editors:

"Neither Japan nor China (either ROC or PRC), NOT EVEN THE FORMOSANS have legally formalized claim to Formosa, an unsettled question in Uncle Sam’s custody under SFPT."

FYI.

How did you hear about AFP?: Press Release

Michael Turton said...

Thanks! I agree Maddog. AFP is the most consistently pro-China news media of all.

Michael

Tim Maddog said...

Here is the link by which others can contact AFP.

Tim Maddog

Unknown said...

While I agree with your assessment that the line is inaccurate, it still amazes me that you constantly find AFP articles that copypaste the line in for the sole and only purpose of griping about that one line. Yes we know the AFP writers are lazy, their editors likes to shoehorn that in, and the policy is pretty biased. But I'm sure there is better content to examine than that one line (over and over again).

Also I would like to ask, what exactly do you think is a truthful line to replace it with? One line, same length. The split in 1949 line isn't totally true, but it isn't blatantly totally false either. I'm willing to bet that the first thing that pops up in your mind is just as truthful as the "split in 1949" line.

Also let's be honest, does Taiwan even have a consensus about Beijing beyond not wanting to be invaded or ruled? I mean, didn't Ma just say that "One China is the ROC?" Also it's still built into the KMT platform, which is very likely going to retake the presidency (ah the perils of a democracy, am i right?).

Tim Maddog said...

Not-the-usual-Thomas asked:
- - -
what exactly do you think is a truthful line to replace it with? One line, same length.
- - -

Let me ask this, NTU-Thomas: Instead of repeating false claims again and again -- for example, "Party X claims that the moon is made of green cheese" -- wouldn't it be best to simply leave out such nonsense? There's no need to "replace it" with anything, because the line to which you refer is not merely "not totally true" -- it's completely false. Taiwan was never part of the PRC, so it could not have "split" from China in 1949.

Tim Maddog

Unknown said...

Sure there is. There is alot of historical background to the situation in the Taiwan straits that the far far majority of AFP readers and other Western readers do not understand. Obviously the day they say Taiwan split from the PRC would be the day I choke to death, but fact is fact, the KMT/ROC came running across to Taiwan subduing/smashing down the local populace after getting embarrased in the civil war (the
"split in 1949" part). And the ROC is now the gov't of Taiwan. How is that completely false?

Like I said, one line to explain the historical context of why Taiwan and China have been at odds all these years. It would be convenient to wish away the ROC and pretend that theres an "ROT" instead but uh... until that happens, we are stuck aren't we? Anyway my point still stands, how would you explain the historical context to uneducated Western news readers then? Rather than attacking that line as "completely false", I am curious what you would say in its steed.

Tim Maddog said...

Not-the-Usual Thomas asked:
- - -
How is that completely false?
- - -

Taiwan was not part of China, so the two could not have "split"? Don't say it in the first place, and there's no need for all the twisted explaining (which you have failed miserably at doing).

NtU-Thomas also amazingly stated:
- - -
... the day they say Taiwan split from the PRC would be the day I choke to death
- - -

When you read the word "China" in articles like that, what do you think they are referring to? Are you still breathing? What split in 1949 was the CCP and the KMT -- and the KMT does not equal Taiwan.

Tim Maddog