China’s latest attempt to squeeze Taiwan’s economy appears to have run out of juice.
A ban on imports of Taiwanese pineapples announced in late February prompted Taipei into immediate action. The government launched operation #FreedomPineapple to rally support on social media and call on people and companies to buy homegrown pineapples.
In just a few days, orders for pineapples — both domestic and from countries including Japan — surpassed the total shipped to China last year.
“Remember #Australia’s #FreedomWine?” asked foreign minister Joseph Wu on Twitter, referring to a campaign last year encouraging people to buy Australian wine after China slapped it with tariffs of more than 200 per cent as Beijing-Canberra relations hit a new low.
“I urge like-minded friends around the globe to stand with #Taiwan & rally behind the #FreedomPineapple,” Wu wrote.
The foreign ministry said China’s ban on Taiwanese pineapples “flies in the face of rules-based, free and fair trade”.
President Tsai Ing-wen urged people to support farmers in Taiwan’s tropical south by eating pineapples. She said her government planned to spend an estimated NT$1bn (US$35m) on measures to offset the impact of the ban, including expanding the export market and targeting the US, Japan and Singapore.
The government said this was the latest in a series of actions by Beijing aimed at damaging Taiwan’s economy and reducing support for Tsai and her ruling Democratic Progressive party. China claims democratic Taiwan as part of its territory, and would prefer to see the current opposition party in Taiwan, the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang, in power.
Relations between Taipei and Beijing have deteriorated since the China-sceptic Tsai came to power in May 2016.
China has launched a ferocious economic and political campaign to isolate Taiwan. Beijing has lured away more of Taipei’s few diplomatic allies, put bans on Chinese individuals getting permits to travel to the island and suspended the admission of Chinese students to Taiwan.
Beijing has so far rejected Taipei’s calls to reverse the pineapple decision. It says the ban is not political but is about pests found in some of the fruit last year. Taiwan says this assertion is disingenuous, pointing out that 99.79 per cent of its pineapples passed China’s customs tests in 2020.
The targeting of pineapples, rather than all agricultural products or other potential exports, suggests “it’s just a political signal” by Beijing, said Drew Thompson, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
“I think it’s just going to alienate Taiwan’s farmers even further and harden public opinion throughout Taiwan on the challenges, but also the folly, of trying to improve relations with China through trade, because China is so quick to use trade as coercion,” he said.
Only about 10 per cent of Taiwan’s pineapples are exported, but most go to China. According to Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture, the island exported 45,621 tonnes in 2020, with 97 per cent going to mainland China, 2 per cent to Japan and 1 per cent to Hong Kong.
Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s vice-president, said orders from Japan, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam and the Middle East were helping to replace those from China, and “the travelling pineapples are looking forward to their new visas”.
Chen Chi-chung, minister of agriculture, said domestic orders for pineapples had already surpassed the total sold to China last year, with 41,687 tonnes of orders placed by the public and companies in four days alone.
By early March, Japan had ordered 5,000 tonnes, “the highest amount ever”, according to a tweet by Lai.
The president, meanwhile, wrote a tweet thanking the Japanese people and urging them to try Taiwanese pineapples as fruits or in other forms such as in cakes.
In recent years, Beijing has been increasing economic, diplomatic and military pressure on Taiwan, including vastly reducing the number of Chinese tourists to the island before the pandemic.
Tsai has been trying to cut down Taiwan’s economic reliance on China and increase its trade with south-east Asian countries, India, Australia and New Zealand. Her administration is also pushing for a free trade agreement with the US.
“However, there are limitations to what Taiwan can do,” said Ashley Feng, a Washington-based independent analyst who has researched Chinese economic pressure on Taiwan. “China is still Taiwan’s largest trading partner and a large and attractive market for many Taiwanese businesspeople.”
Diplomatic offices in Taipei have expressed support for Taiwan following China’s pineapple ban. The American Institute in Taiwan posted photos on Facebook of pineapples on its premises, including one of a smiling Brent Christensen, the de facto American ambassador, with three large pineapples on his desk. The Canadian office posted a photo of staff with pineapple-topped pizzas and Britain shared a recipe for a pineapple upside-down cake.
Thompson said Beijing’s consistent economic coercion of not just Taiwan was a “global challenge . . . and it really needs a global solution”.
“It’s easy for the US to give rhetorical support, but where’s Australia and Sweden and other countries who are victims of this form of economic blackmail?” he said. “The bigger issue here is . . . really the international community’s unwillingness to stand up and coalesce around illiberal behaviour by Beijing in the trade space.”
A version of this article was first published by Nikkei Asia on March 8 2021. ©2021 Nikkei Inc. All rights reserved.
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Source: Economy - ft.com
