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Pact with Japan not
result of ECFA
By Lai I-chung 賴怡忠
The recent signing of an investment protection accord between Japan and Taiwan
is good news. However, for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to say that it is a
result of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed with China
last year is just too much. Not only does such a claim not stand up to the
evidence, it also completely ignores the industry of the governments of former
president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
administrations that followed, or that of the Taiwanese public.
The suggestion is that Japan is hoping to use Taiwan to enter the China market,
using the investment accord and the ECFA as stepping stones. One would think a
better way forward for Japan, if it is looking to sell its products in China,
would be to sign a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Beijing directly, and bypass
any third parties.
By the same rationale, if it really were the ECFA that attracted Japan to
signing the accord with Taiwan, one has to question why it hasn’t yet signed an
FTA or an investment -agreement with another country that already has such an
agreement with China. This would certainly be better than the ECFA, which after
all is merely a framework agreement. The fact is, with the exception of ASEAN,
Japan has never prioritized entering into negotiations on FTAs with any of the
countries that already have an FTA with China.
More importantly, the main reason Japan signed the FTA with ASEAN in 2008, in
addition to concerns over the WTO Doha round of trade negotiations, was that it
was worried about China’s overbearing influence in the ASEAN-plus-China FTA,
which would leave Japan in a weakened position. In other words, Tokyo signed
with ASEAN through strategic considerations and not because of any aspirations
regarding the China market. This example is certainly relevant to the discussion
on Japan’s stance vis-a-vis Taiwan.
We know from confidential US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks that Ma was
not the preferred victor of the 2008 presidential election, as far as former
Japanese representative to Taiwan Tadashi Ikeda was concerned. Indeed,
developments since then seem to have proven Ikeda’s concerns at the time to have
been well founded.
Since Ma became president, for example, there have been two clashes over the
Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). Ma gave his own interpretation of the 1952
Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty, for which he earned a rebuke by Ikeda’s successor,
Masaki Saito, in a speech. In the end, Saito decided to resign at the end of
2009, the year the Ma administration had touted as “The Year to Foster a Special
Partnership Between Taiwan and Japan.”
Moreover, at the beginning of last year, Japanese media were describing
relations between Taiwan and Japan as “frozen.” If it hadn’t been for donations
from Taiwanese following Japan’s earthquake and tsunami on March 11, showing the
Japanese the warmth and goodwill of Taiwanese, it is anyone’s guess when the
damage to the mutual trust between the two countries would have been repaired
and when relations would have thawed.
The great strides forward in Taipei-Tokyo relations in Taiwan’s post-democracy
period are the fruits of hard work by former presidents Lee Teng-hui and Chen
Shui-bian (陳水扁) and the Taiwanese public. Before the DPP lost power, the
Japanese representative to Taiwan at the time said he believed relations between
the two countries were in the best state they had been since the severing of
official diplomatic relations in 1972.
Ma’s claims that all progress in relations subsequent to the signing of the ECFA
has been a direct result of the agreement are completely unfounded. Not only
that, they disregard all of the unsung industry of Taiwanese and the results
this has achieved, in spite of his own shambolic efforts in this regard over the
past three years.
Lai I-chung is an executive committee member of Taiwan Thinktank.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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