Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Is an ECFA beneficial to Taiwan … or the US?

Nat Bellocchi

On March 18, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) held a hearing on recent economic, political and military developments between Taiwan and China and their implications for the US. A broad range of important issues was raised, but one is of utmost interest: the proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China.

While trade agreements between countries are commonplace, this one has some complex elements: It will be an agreement between two “entities” (for lack of a better term) which officially do not recognize each other’s sovereignty.

The ECFA ads, Who is Paying for Them? Taiwan's Taxpayers? the KMT or China?

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

It is two years into the reign of Ma the Incompetent and it appears that the one-trick pony is getting desperate to defend his ECFA efforts and drag Taiwan into economic dependency on the People's Republic of China (PRC). The latest effort of Ma and his combination hired gun/snake oil salesman King Pu-tsung are expensive TV ads saying how the country will totally lose its competitiveness if it does not give the government a blank check to sign ECFA. Allegedly if the people don't sign this blank check by June, it is all over for Taiwan. Can you believe such absurdities?

Why Ma must debate Taiwan - PRC ECFA

Taiwan News Editorial

Although widely seen as leaning strongly toward President Ma Ying-jeou's rightist Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) government, the vernacular "China Times" tossed a spanner into Ma's push to secure rapid signing of a bitterly controversial "Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement" with the authoritarian People's Republic of China.

An opinion poll of 802 persons on March 22 published in the China Times Tuesday showed that while nearly 74 percent of those polled knew about the ECFA talks, nearly 70 percent still said they do not feel familiar with its contents after nearly two years of high-profile government propaganda and social debate and a similar poll of 1,105 Taiwan citiznes surveyed by the DPP's Public Survey Center showed that 78 percent said the KMT government has not clearly explained the content and influence of the proposed ECFA.

Taiwan and China, Geographically Close but Miles Apart Otherwise

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Taiwan and China are two countries separated by some 100 miles of the Taiwan Strait; they are close but so far apart in so many ways. Take today for example, it is ironic that as Google is leaving China because it no longer wishes to be part of its censorship of news and information, in Taiwan, Portico Media is launching WOW (Watch our World) tv. With WOW tv, Portico presents what it terms a "bouquet" of channels for Taiwan on Chunghwa Telecom's IPTV (Internet Protocol television) MOD (Multimedia on Demand).

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