Should Taiwan stop buying goods from the EU
0 voters
France and Germany have led the calls for the ban to be lifted and argue that China’s human rights record has improved since 1989. But other EU nations including Ireland and Sweden, oppose the ban being lifted…
taipeitimes.com/News/front/a … 2003219292
Is Taiwan going to stop shipping its manufacturing base to China? Is Taiwan going to stop buying Chinese products?
I doubt that. Maybe the media will make a short-lived stink about it…then it will disappear, after being replaced by ever-present China-this and China-that editorials.
Just my guess. I don’t really think that Taiwan will give France and Germany what they deserve. How can Taiwan afford to alienate any quasi-friend?
[quote=“Taverncaptain”]France and Germany have led the calls for the ban to be lifted and argue that China’s human rights record has improved since 1989. But other EU nations including Ireland and Sweden, oppose the ban being lifted…
taipeitimes.com/News/front/a … 2003219292[/quote]
Well after reading the headline and then the first paragraph, I had to ask myself what’s wrong here. Straw says it will ‘probably be lifted’ and the headline says ‘to be lifted?’ Amazing contradiction.
Of course let’s not forget the little part later on where it says the U.S. has been pushing hard for the EU not to lift the ban.
So we have one non-story, with basically Straw’s personal opinion, with an inaccurate headline and a new thread/poll on forumosa.com but then again it was nice to read the story beside that one – ‘Stunt by comedian Ali G nearly causes a riot at US rodeo.’
Spare me. When after Tiananmen, the US, the EU and the rest of the civilized world slapped sanctions on the PRC, what did Taiwan do? They increased trade and investment in order to take advantage of the new business openings.
Screw’em. I could give a rats ass. :raspberry:
[quote]The brutality of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown by Beijing instantly chilled the hitherto spreading “mainland fever” among the inhabitants of the Republic of China, or Taiwan. It seemed that, with their aspiration to reunify with the People’s Republic of China, or China, shattered forever, their expanding – albeit non- governmental – interactions with the mainland would cease indefinitely. Yet, only seven months later, Taiwanese pop singers Lin Chung and Huang Lei celebrated the incoming Year of the Horse on stage in Beijing. Earlier, on December 16, 1989, an unofficial Taiwan delegation led by legislator Chang Pingchau and an obviously semi-official mainland group led by former Minister of Commerce Zhen Hongye, signed an agreement in Hong Kong to establish an organization – the Association for Coordination of Trading and Commercial Affairs Across the Strait (ACTCA) – for promoting and mediating economic and technological exchanges between the two sides.
On July 1, 1989, seventy-six Taiwanese businessman attended an export commodities fair in Dalian where one Taiwan visitor made an investment of 5 million dollars. From August to October 1989, Taiwan manufacturers transferred to the mainland more than 50 production lines for making shoes, umbrellas, and furniture.
At a Guangzhou export commodities fair in the fall of 1989, over 500 Taiwan businessman attended, more than ever before. One and a half months after the formation of ACTCA in Hong Kong, Wang Yung-ching – head of Taiwan’s largest conglomerate Formosa Plastics, and the 15th wealthiest man in the world – made an investment reconnaissance trip to the mainland on January 11, 1990. [/quote]
Taiwan is in the unenviable position of having to separate nearly everything from business, don’t you think?
Opportunism is understandable (although not defensible), given that Taiwan always seems to have its back ot he wall. There is no high road for Taiwan, either the government can do something stupid and get bad press or do something good and be ignored.
On the other side of this coin, it seems also that the EU is playing this opportunistic/no defense game as well. They can make a hell of lot more money selling weapons to China than to Taiwan. I doubt any charges of bribery would surface in the Chinese press. So the French are in with both feet.