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China to be removed
from high-tech trade watch list
DECRIMINALIZATION: As early as tomorrow, workers
who break rules on exports of high-tech machinery to China will no longer be
subject to jail terms of up to five years
By Shih Hsiu-chuan / Staff reporter
The government is set to relax penalties for the illegal export of strategic
high-tech commodities (SHTC) to China by removing criminal liability imposed for
illegal trade in controlled items, with the exception of 12 types of items
related to semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
Perhaps as early as tomorrow, employees at Taiwanese firms that export items on
the SHTC export control list to China without a permit will no longer be liable
to be sentenced to up to five years in prison, but will still be subject to
administrative penalties, including fines, temporary suspension of import and
export permits and revocation of business registration.
The removal of criminal liability comes as the government proposes to revise the
types of specific and strategic high-tech commodities that may be exported to
restricted regions. Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Syria and China are
classified as “restricted areas.”
Under the proposed revision drafted by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, China
would be classed as a “non-restricted area” under normal circumstances, with the
exception of exports of the following machinery used for semiconductor wafer
processing: chemical mechanical polishers; photoresist strippers; photoresist
developers; rapid thermal processors; deposition apparatus; cleaning equipment,
dryers; electron microscopes; etching machines; ion implanters; photoresist
coaters; and lithography equipment.
The Foreign Trade Act (貿易法) stipulates that exports or imports of SHTCs to
“restricted areas” without a government permit shall be punishable with
imprisonment of up to five years, detention or a fine of not more than NT$1.5
million (US$50,600).
Illegal exports or imports of SHTCs to “non-restricted areas” and without a
proper permit can result in a fine of between NT$30,000 and NT$300,000, the
suspension of exports and imports for a period of between one month and a year,
or the revocation of registration licenses.
The proposed revisions, promulgated on Thursday, are due to take force tomorrow
if there are no objections.
In a telephone interview, Chang Chun-fu (張俊福), deputy director-general of the
Bureau of Foreign Trade, said the revisions were made in response to
longstanding requests by local firms, as well as to bring the domestic rules in
line with export control regimes in most countries/jurisdictions, such as the
US, EU, Japan and South Korea.
Chang said he was “not positively sure” that no country was imposing criminal
liability to prevent the transfer of materials or technology to China that could
be used to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but “all the major
countries separate export control regimes applied to China from those applied to
Iran and North Korea.”
“We don’t have to apply export control rules to our firms that are stricter than
other countries because that would put them in an unfair position,” Chang said.
Jeremy Shen (沈建一), deputy executive secretary of the Trade Security and Export
Control Task Force at the bureau, said the revisions with respect to penalties
did not amount to a loosening of the export control system.
“The items on the SHTC list remain the same, while trade in the items both with
restricted areas and with non-restricted areas requires a permit in advance,”
Shen said.
Because Taiwan is not a UN member, it has been outside various international
arrangements to prevent the proliferation of WMD materials and know-how.
Despite this, Taiwan unilaterally established an export control regime in the
1990s with help from the US, Japan, Germany, the UK and Israel.
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