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DPP slams Ma’s handling of
cross-strait relations
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Legislators from the Democratic
Progressive Party, People First Party and Taiwan Solitary Union display placards
reading: “Refuse the secret meeting between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
and the Chinese Communist Party” to protest the KMT plan to open cross-strait
representative offices during a meeting in the legislature in Taipei yesterday.
PHOTO: Sam Yeh, AFP
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has
mishandled cross-strait relations and the government should respect Taiwan’s
sovereignty, safeguard the interests of its people and uphold the democratic
process, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.
While the DPP has always supported fair and reciprocal cross-strait economic
activities, the public, the opposition and most Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
politicians were not informed of the contents of a service trade agreement set
to be signed today, DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said.
“It is unbelievable that in a democratic country, only a handful of high-ranking
government officials know what the agreement entails. It was also unbelievable
that the sectors to be included on the liberalization list and what impact the
agreement could have on those sectors, their employees and Taiwan’s economy
remain unknown,” Su said.
He said the pact should not be signed before the government submits an impact
assessment report.
Su also criticized the KMT for advocating a “one China” structure to echo
Beijing’s “one China” framework without going through a democratic process,
saying that the initiative has stripped the Taiwanese of their right to
determine their own future.
“We demand that Ma explain the matter to the public clearly, without ambiguity
or evasion,” Su said.
DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said the party condemns the opaque nature
of the service trade agreement.
“Taiwanese businesses and workers are entitled to be informed of the details of
the pact, which is a follow-up to the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement [ECFA],
and may affect their livelihoods. The negotiations should also be monitored by
the legislature,” Lin said.
Citing a recent public opinion poll conducted by the DPP’s polling center, Lin
said 68.4 percent of respondents said the Ma administration has failed to meet
its stated goals three years after the ECFA was signed and only 9.9 percent
thought that the goals have been met.
The poll, conducted on June 10 and June 11, collected 989 valid samples and had
a margin of error of 3.18 percentage points.
DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) said China has refused to liberalize the sector
related to intellectual property rights, which is Taiwan’s most competitive
service sector, while for the other four sectors — transportation, travel,
insurance and finance — in which Taiwan enjoys advantages that are scheduled to
be liberalized, Beijing has set up trade barriers.
“Beijing only wanted to absorb Taiwan’s labor, investments and know-how in those
sectors,” Lee said.
Meanwhile, Taiwan Solidarity Union Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) said the
agreement scheduled to be signed today is a ploy by the Ma administration to
legalize the entry of Chinese workers to Taiwan.
The new pact would affect more than 4.7 million employees in Taiwan, he said.
The ECFA did not substantially benefit Taiwan, as the administration claims, and
the government’s eagerness to open the service sector to Chinese investors
ignores the common worker in Taiwan and panders to the Chinese, Huang said.
“Opening the market to foreign investment is an opportunity to increase job
opportunities, but opening up the service trade will only take away jobs from
Taiwanese and harm Taiwanese businesses,” Huang said.
Voicing doubts about the quality of the Chinese service sector, Huang said
Taiwan’s service quality outranked China’s by a fair margin.
“It doesn’t matter which area of the service sector — hair salons and cosmetics,
tourism or dining — once it is opened to cheap Chinese labor it will take away
job opportunities from Taiwanese,” Huang said, adding that the opening would
fuel a vicious cycle of cost-cutting.
Additional reporting by Chen Ching-min and Tseng Wei-chen
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