In the wake of the signing of the controversial "Cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement" with the authoritarian People's Republic of China, President Ma Ying-jeou and his Kuomintang government have maintained that they refuted the warnings of critics and "held the line" on the defense of Taiwan's agriculture.
This claim has some justice since the new pact's early harvest lists did not grant the PRC any concessions on the 830 agricultural produce categories in which imports from China are banned nor any reductions in tariff protection for 1,415 produce types whose importation from China is already allowed under the terms of our entry into the World Trade Organization in early 2002, secured tariff cuts for 18 types of agricultural and fishery produce from Taiwan.
