Taiwan, China sign aviation, tax deals after hiatus

TAIPEI: Taiwan and China yesterday signed two agreements on the safety of civil aviation and avoidance of double taxation in China, 18 months after the two sides held the last high-level talks to seal bilateral deals.

Taiwan’s semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation announced in a statement that SEF head Lin Join-sane and his Chinese counterpart, Chen Deming, head of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, signed the two agreements during the 11th cross-strait high-level talks in Fuzhou, Fujian Province.

The meeting was previously held in February last year when both sides signed two agreements in Taipei on sharing weather and earthquake data.

The 18-month hiatus was mainly caused by a student-led movement against the agreement on trade in services both sides signed in June 2013.

Protesters occupied the legislative chamber and stormed the government headquarters after the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) rammed the agreement through a legislative committee.

Seeking to resolve the crisis, Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou agreed that the legislature will review the agreement and vote on it article by article and that a bill regulating the signing of bilateral agreements with China will be enacted.

While the oversight legislation is still bogged down in the legislature, negotiators on both sides focused on less sensitive issues such as aviation and taxation.

The main purpose of the avoidance of double taxation is to improve both sides’ investment environment and increase the competitiveness of their businesspeople although China will suffer short-term losses of tax revenues.

The civil aviation safety pact will allow certified aviation maintenance technicians on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to perform scheduled maintenance and inspections on aircraft and use repaired or replacement parts manufactured on either side.

Currently, airlines on both sides must bring their own aircraft replacement parts and maintenance crew to provide services on their own aircraft.

As for a planned joint statement on allowing Chinese air travellers to transfer in Taiwan en route to and from foreign destinations, Lin said he hoped negotiations will continue and that there would be a positive result by the end of this year.

Apart from signing the two agreements, both sides agreed yesterday to place four issues on the agenda of the next round of cross-strait level talks.

They are co-operation of environmental protection, establishment of representative offices of SEF and ARATS and two of the follow-up pacts under the framework of a l andmark trade deal signed i n June 2010.

While t he i ndependence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party stands a better chance of winning the presidential and legislative elections in January next year, Chen emphasised the importance of the so-called “1992 consensus” that Beijing and Taipei consider to form the basis of institutionalised cross-strait negotiations and political foundation of mutual trust.

Neither the DPP nor its presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen recognise the “1992 consensus,” a purported agreement between the KMT and the Communist Party of China that there is only one China with each retaining its own interpretation of what “one China” means.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has warned that if the “1992 consensus” is sabotaged, the trust between China and Taiwan will cease to exist and that cross-strait relations will return to a turbulent state.

Taiwan and China have been governed separately since 1949 when the KMT forces led by Chiang Kai-shek were defeated by the Communists under Mao Zedong and fled to Taiwan.

China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has threatened in the past to invade should the island formally declare independence.