Made in Taiwan, China demand by Beijing sparks Taiwan protests

China's practice of economic nationalism means that it is will always move toward reducing or blocking imports while attempting to get those firms to move their production operations to China. It will also use its economic relations with Taiwan to continue the pressure on Taiwan to incorporate.

A good example is this DPA report on China's move to put pressure on Taiwan to mark its exports Taiwan, China.

Taiwan was to persuade China to drop its demand that all Taiwanese goods exported to China must be marked 'Made in Taiwan Province of China,' it was reported Sunday.

'We will not accept China's demand, and will hold talks with China to find a solution,' the Liberty Times quoted Vice Economics Minister Lin Sheng-chung as saying.

'Both Taiwan and China are WTO (World Trade Organization) members, and Taiwan is a separate tariffs territory recognized by WTO,' he said. 'Therefore, China's demand violates WTO rules and hurts Taiwan exporters' interests.'

According to the report, China had stipulated as early as 2005 that Taiwanese goods sold to China be marked as coming from 'Taiwan, China' or 'Taipei, China.'

But the request by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade had not been taken seriously by Chinese customs until recently.

In recent months, several regions in China have begun to screen the source of origin of Taiwanese goods, and rejected those marked 'Made in Taiwan,' the report said.

Just think: China's desire to annex Taiwan is now a formal trade barrier to Taiwan goods entering China. It's good that Taiwan officials will negotiate on that one, but don't expect any progress. China can easily maintain a secret policy of blocking "Made in Taiwan" while piously claiming that it is all error or local issues, as they did with the Olympic formulation of Zhonghua Taibei.

Acceding to this demand would make the Ma Administration unpopular and hurt its chances at the polls. It will be interesting to see whether Beijing pulls back on this one until after the 2012 election, when a Ma victory will make the sellout a foregone conclusion.

The best part of this report was the typo in the historically inaccurate "split in '49" refrain:

LOLz to The Chinese "Rationalists". But note how the next paragraph actually attempts to represent what Taiwan's position is. Good work, DPA.

UPDATE: Don't miss Don's excellent comment below.

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