The Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and the Straits Exchange Foundation(SEF) jointly held the 7th Regular Meeting of the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Committee in Taipei on January 29, 2015. Executive Vice President of the ARATS Zheng Lizhong and Vice Chairman of the SEF Shi Huifen were conveners, and Gao Yan, chief representative of ECC and vice minister of commerce from the mainland, and Zhuo Shizhao, chief representative of Taiwan, co-chaired the meeting. The two sides reviewed the work of all working groups since the sixth regular meeting, evaluated the implementation fruits of early harvests of ECFA, discussed the procession of follow-up negotiations, concluded the progress made from cross-strait economic cooperation, outlined the future work and exchanged views on bilateral economic development and policies. Fruitful results were made from the meeting:
Firstly, the fruits of ECFA early harvest further stood out. The value of beneficial products of both sides has maintained constant growth and cross-straits industries have benefited a lot from the ECFA early harvest since it was implemented four years ago. On trade in goods, the combined tariff reduction of Taiwan’s export of ECFA early harvest products to the mainland totaled US$2.2 billion and that of the mainland to Taiwan registered US$220 million. On trade in services, more than 340 Taiwan enterprises and 137 investment projects in Taiwan made by the mainland have benefited from the early harvest.
Secondly, remarkable achievements have been made by working groups.
The trade in goods working group stepped up the negotiations steadily. Phased progress has been made in the agreement text and market opening and the next round of negotiations was arranged preliminarily to start after the Spring Festival.
The trade in services working group actively broke new ground. Consensus was reached on cooperation in areas of the statistics of trade in services, commercial franchise and computer information system integration qualification certification, and active talks on relevant regulation of Taiwan SMEs’ entering the mainland’s market was held in particular.
The investment working group continued to perfect relevant mechanisms including the coordination mechanism, the consultation mechanism and the mediation mechanism. The two sides made great efforts to promote the settlement of dispute cases along with the investment so as to safeguard the legitimate rights of SMEs in Taiwan.
The dispute settlement working group reached consensus on many aspects of the dispute settlement agreement.
The industrial cooperation working group positively promoted the cross-straits industries to cooperate in pilot development, mechanism exchanges, joint innovation, expanding markets together and industrial linkage, and took a positive attitude towards setting up an e-commerce working sub-group which will be studied and confirmed at the next working group meeting.
The customs cooperation working group has effectively solved the problem of being not able to apply ECFA preferential rates for the third party trade, and increased the functions of document verification and regular exchanges of trade data to the cross-straits customs e-information exchange system.
In addition, the two sides will help with the establishment of Taipei Office of the Association of Economy and Trade across Taiwan Straits and the Dongguan Representative Office of Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association.
Thirdly, issues of both concern have been talked about deeply. It was decided at this meeting to establish a cross-straits SMEs cooperation working group in line with Article 6 of ECFA with a view to better benefiting cross-straits SMEs and people. The two sides exchanged views on inspection and quarantine cooperation and food security. The mainland side also briefed the Taiwan side on the Belt and Road Initiatives, Law on Foreign Capital Enterprises ( Draft Soliciting Opinions), the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone and relevant situations on the mainland’s expansion of FTA pilots. Both sides expected to strengthen communication and expand cooperation in the areas.
In the past four years, the two sides have made active efforts to cooperate and seek development and achieved fruitful results. In the future, faced with a new situation, new normal and new changes, the two sides will give the role of ECC into better play and promote constant improvement of institutionalized economic cooperation.
