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Taiwan
ChinaPolitics

Beijing hints at changing trade pact with Taiwan amid probe into tariffs

  • Taiwan Affairs Office says preliminary findings suggest island violated WTO principles with restrictions on mainland goods
  • A day earlier the commerce ministry said ‘appropriate measures’ would be taken based on the outcome of its investigation

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The commerce ministry started an investigation in April into tariffs and restrictions on mainland Chinese goods imposed by the Taiwanese government. Photo: Robert Ng
Josephine Ma
Beijing has hinted that it may abandon or revise a trade pact with Taiwan in retaliation against the self-ruled island’s restrictions on goods from mainland China.
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A commerce ministry spokesperson on Thursday said it would “take appropriate measures based on the outcome of an investigation [by the ministry] into trade barriers” imposed by Taiwan.

On Friday, the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office said preliminary findings of that investigation suggested Taiwan had violated World Trade Organization principles by unilaterally imposing trade restrictions on a large number of mainland Chinese goods.

It comes about six months ahead of the island’s presidential election in January and also coincided with a transit stop in the US by William Lai Ching-te, the front runner in the race. Lai, who is the island’s vice-president and the Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate, returned to Taiwan on Friday via San Francisco after attending the inauguration of new Paraguayan President Santiago Pena.

The commerce ministry in April said it had started investigating tariffs and restrictions on more than 2,455 mainland goods imposed by the Taiwanese government including on agricultural products, textiles, minerals and petrochemicals. Beijing later said 2,509 products were part of the probe.

Neither the ministry nor the Taiwan Affairs Office statements explicitly said Beijing would walk away from the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement – a quasi free-trade pact signed between Taipei and Beijing in 2010, but they cast doubt over the viability of the agreement.

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