Critics see little progress in investment pact negotiations

Taipei, Oct. 21 (CNA) Taiwan and China have vowed to ink an investment protection pact in their next round of talks, but local critics said Friday that they have not seen any significant progress in the preliminary consensus between the two sides on the issue. In their latest round of talks in the Chinese city of Tianjin on Thursday, Taiwan and China broke the impasse in the negotiations by agreeing that a personal safety notification system was a necessary factor. The Taipei-based Cross-Strait Agreement Watch (CSAW), however, pointed out that there was no mention of judicial system reforms. "The 24-hour-notification system is as basic as a cap, if you imagine the personal safety of Taiwanese businessmen as a bottle," CSAW Chairman Lai Chung-chiang told CNA.
"The problem lies in its implementation, and I think it will largely depend on how both sides adjust their judicial systems," he added. Lai called on the authorities in Taiwan and China to bring their law enforcement officials into the negotiations. "We won't see a satisfying investment protection pact in the next meeting if there is no change in the way the negotiations are being conducted," he said. Lai also stressed that a sound personal protection mechanism should include visitation rights for government officials and relatives of the detainee, right to legal counsel, and freedom from torture or coercion to obtain confessions. These issues apparently were not addressed in the statement issued after Thursday's meeting, he said. In similar vein, Lu Jiun-wei, a researcher from the Taiwan Thinktank, urged Taiwan to hold out for an international arbitration mechanism in the proposed agreement, noting that it was not included in the statement. "The agreement will only be taken seriously by both sides if there is a provision for third-party arbitration," Lu said. "All the investment pacts we have signed with other countries are bounded by such rules, and China shouldn't be an exception." Taiwan and China have been working toward an investment protection pact since they signed an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) last June, but failed in follow-up negotiations to iron out their differences on certain provisions of the pact. However, officials from the Taipei-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and its Beijing counterpart the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) said there had been preliminary progress on the issue in their last two meetings. In the statement issued after Thursday's meeting, both sides vowed to sign the pact in their eighth round of negotiations. The accord will cover issues such as personal safety protection, removal of investment barriers and compensation for property expropriation, the statement said. (By Lee Hsin-Yin)

Source: Taiwan News