China shows immense buying power in Taiwan

Those were some of the deals signed off by a 2,000-strong delegation from China's Fujian Province during a weeklong visit to Taiwan that ended Monday.

It was one of the many buy-Taiwan delegations China has sent across the 100-mile- (160-kilometer-) wide Taiwan Strait over the past year. The visits underscore China's newly acquired wealth and its immense buying power. They come amid rapidly warming relations prompted by Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou's efforts to promote trade and end decades of hostility.

The Fujian delegation, led by the governor and three deputy governors, was by far the largest, and attracted constant media coverage, with television cameras following Fujian chief Huang Xiaojing as he chatted with people on the street, visited high-tech factories and sampled the island's famed yellow mangoes.

While it is still uncertain whether all of the product orders will be honored — previous Chinese buying trips to Taiwan have not always lived up to the promises — the mission from Fujian underscores China's interest in leveraging its buying power to achieve political ends.

Taiwan and the mainland split amid civil war in 1949, and Beijing continues to insist that Taiwan should be united — by persuasion if possible, by force if necessary.

Chinese leader Hu Jintao believes that closer economic ties are the best way to move toward that target, and provincial buying trips — combined with a groundbreaking trade pact expected to be signed next month — are viewed as key elements in his strategy.

The Fujian mission was certainly eventful. Before departing on Monday, Huang attended a ceremony in the southern port of Kaohsiung for the inaugural cruise by China's Cosco Star from the Fujian city of Xiamen port. It carried 300 Chinese passengers, many with the kind of bulging wallets that light up the eyes of Taiwanese merchants and tour operators.

Huang also offered tax incentives for Taiwanese investing in his province's Haixi Economic Zone, which is modeled after Taiwan's world-famous high-tech parks. Working together, he said, the two sides could design and manufacture products that could make an impact all over the world.

During its visit to Taiwan, the Fujian group may have been thinking about unification, but they were careful not to talk too much about it, perhaps because the idea of democratic Taiwan joining with communist China has few supporters on the island.

“The buy-Taiwan group no doubt had a political purpose, but the Chinese have learned to push their political agenda in a more subtle way,” said Huang Wei-cher, a lawmaker with the opposition Democratic Progressive Party.

That may explain why the delegation's visits to Yunlin and Tainan in western and southern Taiwan — the stronghold of the pro-independence DPP — did not produce the kind of violent demonstrations that marred earlier visits by senior Chinese envoys.

Instead of proselytizing about unification, this visit was much more attuned to people-to-people diplomacy.

One of its highlights was a gala banquet attended by 106 Fujian town chiefs and other officials as well as their counterparts in Nantou County in central Taiwan.

With 40 chefs from Fujian doing the cooking, the banquet for 700 people was described by local media as the largest grass-roots exchange ever conducted between Taiwan and China.

On Sunday, a group of mainland officials and tour operators visited Taipei's Lin Family Garden and admired its Fujian-style pavilions and houses built in the 1840s by a Taiwanese millionaire, who was among the many immigrating to the island from the Chinese province.

“This is one clear piece of evidence that we have the same roots and should get along well,” said Bao Guozhong, a tour operator from the Fujian capital of Fuzhou.

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email