Taipei, July 7 (CNA) The historic trade agreement that Taiwan and China signed late last month will give Taiwanese businesses an advantage in the Chinese market and force Japan to rethink its strategy in the East Asian region, according to Japanese newspapers and experts.
But some of them also warned of a hidden political agenda on China's part.
Under the economic framework coopertion agreement (ECFA), zero tariffs, deregulation and greater market access will give Taiwanese businessmen an edge in China, editorial writers in Japan said, urging their government to react before it's too late.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, which focuses on economic news, said in an editorial July 4 that the ECFA is the first free trade agreement (FTA) in Northeast Asia, and the pact will give Taiwanese businessmen an advantage over their competitors from Japan and South Korea in the Chinese market.
President Ma Ying-jeou has been trying to normalize a hostile cross-strait situation and has achieved a status "beyond normalization," it said.
In the wake of the ECFA, there is stronger push for South Korea to secure an economic partnership agreement with China over Japan, the newspaper wrote. Tokyo should also consider such a pact with Beijing, given the importance of the Chinese market, it said.
On July 1, Yomiuri Shimbun in its editorial warned Japan's petrochemical, electronics and autoparts industries that they could be affected negatively by the ECFA.
However, Japan's computer component makers could benefit because "computers produced in Taiwan use many components made in Japan, it said. If Taiwan products become more price-competitive in China and therefore sell better, Japanese parts makers could reap the windfall, the editorial said.
According to Asahi Shimbum on July 2, a broader Taiwan-China economic partnership will be a threat to Japanese firms in the global market. It said China sought to meet the expectations of the Taiwanese people and reassure them as part of its efforts to lay the groundwork for eventual unification.
Those policy measures apparently reflect Beijing's strategy to promote bilateral economic integration to set the stage for future political talks on unification, the paper said.
Three newspapers -- Asahi Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun and Sankei Shimbun -- said that China made more concessions than Taiwan in the deal. China and Taiwan will phase out tariffs on 539 and 267 items, respectively, by January 2013 and China has agreed not to ask Taiwan to open its labor market to Chinese workers, they noted.
Sankei Shimbun wrote June 25, the day the "early harvest" lists of items from both sides were released, that China's concessions in the ECFA were meant to give leverage to Ma, its preferred candidate, in Taiwan's 2012 presidential election.
According to Japanese government officials, Japan will closely watch whether more items will be added to the early harvest lists. It might be necessary to promote a free trade agreement among Japan, China and South Korea, and to resume talks on an economic partnership agreement with South Korea, they said.
Meanwhile, Taiwan said it is seeking to sign FTAs with its other major trade partners, including Japan, U.S. and the European Union.
Taiwan will liberalize its trade relations with Japan through a "block-building" approach which starts with investment protection and intellectual property rights protection, Nien Shinn-shyh, deputy secretary-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Association of East Asian Relations, told reporters Tuesday.
Kenichi Ohmae, a Japanese corporate strategist, said June 22 in Taipei that the ECFA will be a "vitamin" for Taiwan's economy.
The ECFA, coupled with Taiwan's airlinks with China - 370 weekly round-trip flights -- and its lower corporate income tax of 17 percent will give it an advantage and attract more overseas companies, including Japanese ones, he said.
According Lo Fu-chen, a former Taiwan representative to Japan, some Japanese experts think that President Ma pushed hard for the deal and that it would benefit Taiwan in the first two to three years after its signing without having any immediate political implications.
"They assume that it (the deal) would be the beginning of economic unification with China which will lead to eventual political unification, " he said. (By Chris Wang) enditem /pc