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In mid-September, the Chinese mainland announced without warning that it would suspend the import of Taiwan’s custard apple and lotus mist. The Taiwanese government had said when it was informed that it would consider seeking the World Trade Organization (WTO) if there is no official response from the Chinese side before the end of September. )solve.
Chen Jizhong, chairman of the Taiwan Council of Agriculture, confirmed to the media at the Taiwan Legislative Court on Friday (October 1) that because he had not received a formal response from the Chinese Customs, he had sent the complaint to the Taiwan Representative Office in Geneva. It is expected that the meeting will be held in November. Submit a complaint to the regular meeting of the WTO’s Food Safety Inspection and Animal and Plant Quarantine (SPS) Committee.
The Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council of China has repeatedly emphasized that the suspension of Taiwan’s fruit imports is purely to prevent pests and protect mainland agricultural products, and has nothing to do with politics.
According to analysis, the arbitration mechanism of large global organizations such as the United Nations and the WTO is declining. Take the WTO as an example. In recent years, the handling of trade disputes among member states has been due to institutional bureaucracy and political factors, which have caused relevant complaints to hesitate.
Therefore, Taiwan’s complaint to the WTO may be an imitation of Australia’s complaint against China, using the complaint as a bargaining chip to exert negotiation pressure on Beijing. However, judging from China’s tough diplomatic strategy and the tension between the two sides of the strait, whether China will sit at the negotiating table with Taiwan on the fruit ban is still a big question mark.
Grounds of complaint from Taiwan
Taiwan media reported that if the complaint is delivered as scheduled, it will be the first time that Taiwan has filed a WTO dispute settlement request on agricultural trade issues.
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Pineapple, custard apple and lotus mist account for the top three in the total amount of fruit exported from Taiwan to the mainland. The picture shows Sakyamuni.
Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture previously stated to Taiwan media that China’s customs banned the import of Taiwan’s fruits, “involving violations of the principle of non-discrimination, exceeding the protection standards, and seemingly not promulgating relevant regulations, which may violate the provisions of the SPS agreement.” The relevant provisions mentioned in it include: Article 2 Basic rights and obligations, and Article 5 Risk assessment and determination of appropriate inspection or anti-epidemic protection level.
Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture said that it will apply to the WTO in accordance with Australia’s case.
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Taiwan pineapple was banned by mainland China in the first half of this year.
According to WTO procedures, after a member’s complaint, there will be a 30 to 60 day request consultation stage. The complainant can request the establishment of a committee. The committee will hold a hearing, collect evidence, and make a ruling on the dispute. The process is approximately It takes 180 days. The committee then makes a decision.
The committee’s decision can only be overturned if all member states agree, otherwise it will automatically take effect.
Appeals are time-consuming and labor-intensive, and even if the appeal is successful, there are difficulties in enforcement, which gradually weakens the effectiveness of WTO arbitration. Many countries choose to resolve similar trade disputes through political negotiations.
Is the appeal to start negotiations?
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The World Trade Organization is headquartered in Geneva and was established in 1995. If the complaint is delivered as scheduled, it will be the first time that Taiwan has filed a dispute settlement request in the WTO on the issue of agricultural trade.
Taking the trade dispute between Australia and China as a comparison, in the middle of this year, the Australian government filed a complaint with the WTO against the anti-dumping duty on wine from China. The case is still under trial.
At that time, Australian Foreign Minister Payne publicly stated that only by submitting such a complaint can “promote bilateral talks between the two countries.”
In other words, the petition filed in the WTO is used as a bargaining chip for political negotiation, rather than actually asking the other party to accept arbitration. That is to say, the WTO arbitration mechanism will become a kind of diplomatic pressure, forcing the other party to enter into negotiations.
In July 2018, when the U.S.-China trade war was in full swing, China and the U.S. sued each other through the WTO, which was also a means to put pressure on each other’s diplomacy.
Analyzing Taiwan’s situation, when Taiwanese pineapples were banned at the beginning of this year, Dr. Li Chun from the WTO and RTA Center of the Taiwanese think-tank China Economic Research Institute stated to Taiwan media that it is more appropriate to give priority to negotiation and lodge a complaint with the WTO as the last option, because The appeal will take one year or even one and a half years.
Li Chun said that Taiwan can refer to Australia’s previous practices, “mainly through consultations, and not rule out complaints as a supplement, and express our position to show that we actively defend our rights and serve as a bargaining chip… The focus is on solving problems, not real. Litigation.”
He also emphasized that mainland China does not want to see cross-strait complaints in the WTO, because the mainland is not happy to see Taiwan on an equal footing with the same international platform.
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Australia has lodged a complaint with China about tariffs on wine to the WTO.
However, external analysis shows that in the context of China’s tough “wolf war diplomacy” approach and the inconsistent cross-strait relations, it is not easy for Taiwan to file a WTO complaint and hope that China will sit at the negotiating table.
James Fry, an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong who has done legal consulting work for the WTO, once explained to the BBC in Chinese that trade disputes involve powerful countries, and political factors have made it difficult for the WTO’s arbitration mechanism to resolve disputes in these countries.
This also makes inter-regional, smaller-scale free trade negotiation mechanisms, such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RECP) more important.
But at present, Taiwan has not joined the RECP led by China and the CPTPP of Japan and Australia, and can only lodge a complaint with the giant WTO.
Chen Heng, an economist at the University of Hong Kong, also told the BBC that regional countries are more familiar with each other and easier to negotiate. A small-scale international organization can better protect national interests. Large multilateralist organizations are not particularly effective. “When you enter a big network, you can’t tell who benefits and who suffers.”
The fruit war between the two sides of the strait continues
Taiwan’s complaint against China in the WTO is a continuation of the fruit war between the two sides of the strait.
On the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday in September, China Customs announced that the two fruits will be suspended from September 20 due to the detection of quarantine pests from the custard apple and lotus mist imported from Taiwan to the mainland. Of imports.
In February of this year, the General Administration of Customs of the Mainland China also decided to suspend the import of Taiwan pineapples on the grounds of quarantine, which caused a lot of public opinion in Taiwan.
According to data from the Taiwan Agriculture Committee, the three banned fruits this year accounted for the top three in the total number of fruits exported from Taiwan to the mainland. Taiwan’s “Freedom Times” quoted an unnamed politician as saying that the pineapple and lotus mist plantations are mainly distributed in the south, which is the DPP’s ticket warehouse, but the main birthplace of Sakyamuni is in Taitung, eastern Taiwan, where the traditional Kuomintang is. According to the ticket warehouse, China’s suppression of Taiwan has “no distinction between blue and green.”