bei jing

Taipei - Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou said Friday that the up-coming Taipei-Beijing dialogue is intended to build mutual trust and is vital for Taiwan’s survival. Ma made the remark while receiving the Taiwan delegation ahead of the talks to be held in Nanjing, China, Friday through Saturday.

Ma said that in the past 11 months since he took office, Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China’s Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) have been building mutual trust.

“This mutual trust should not exist only between Taiwan and China, but should also exit between Taiwan and the United States, and Taiwan and Japan,” he said.

“The work we are doing is not only directed at China. Our focus is on the whole world. We lost too much time in the past eight years (under former president Chen Shui-bian). So the government must catch up with the steps of world. The whole world is changing, so Taiwan cannot stick with old ways and stare at the sky from the bottom of a well like a frog. If we continue to isolate ourselves, there will be no way out for Taiwan,” he said.

Regarding Taiwan-China talks, Ma said the two sides should solve issues related to people’s livelihood first and tackle difficult issues later.

“It is just like the arithmetic test for primary school pupils. They answer simple questions first and difficult questions later,” he noted.

At a news conference afterwards, SEF Secretary-General Chiang Ping-kun, who will be Taiwan’s chief negotiator at the Nanjing dialogue, said he will try his best to make the talks successful.

“My main task is to sign the pacts and to decide the topics for the next dialogue. I will try my best to get the best terms for Taiwan,” he said.

Taiwan and China have been split since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, but held a historic dialogue in Singapore in 1993 and several follow-up talks under the dialogue’s framework afterwards.

China halted the talks in 1995 to retaliate against former president Lee Teng-hui’s advocating Taiwan independence, and refused to re-open the talks during the 2000-2008 term of ex-president Chen Shui-bian, who was also labeled as a separatists by Beijing.

China agreed to resume the dialogue only after Ma, from the Chinese Nationalist Party, took office in May 2008 as Ma pledged to seek peace with China and would not promote Taiwan independence.

So Taiwan and China held their second dialogue in Beijing in June 2008, agreeing to open weekend charter flights to let Chinese tour groups to visit Taiwan, and held the third dialogue in Taipei in November 2008, which expanded weekend charter flights to daily charter flights and opened sea links across the Taiwan Strait.

The 4th dialogue will be held between SEF Secretary-General Chiang Ping-kun and ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin.

On Saturday, Chiang and Chen will sign pacts on financial cooperation, cross-strait criminal investigation and regular charter flights.

They will also issue a statement on the consensus on allowing Chinese investment coming to Taiwan and announce the topics to be discussed at the next dialogue, to be held in late 2009 in Taiwan.

Many Taiwan scholars see the up-coming dialogue as a positive step in cross-strait relationship, but warned that it will take a long time before Taiwan and China can have mutual trust.

“The up-coming dialgoue will achieve some symbolic results, like the signing of some agreements. But when it comes to implementing the agreements, may it be judicial cooperation or granting Taiwan airlines the right to extend their flights from China to another country, it will touch on Taiwan’s sovereignty,” Tsai Wei, a professor from the Chinese Culture University, told the German Press Agency dpa.

“China does not accept Taiwan’s sovereignty, and that will remain obstacle to cross-strait relationship,” he said.

A visit by the Japanese Prime Minister to China next week is to go ahead, despite Beijing’s anger at his gesture of support for a controversial war shrine.

Taro Aso’s visit to Beijing was thrown into doubt on Tuesday when he sent a potted masakaki tree to the Yasukuni shrine.

The shrine honours Japan’s fallen soldiers, including 14 convicted war criminals from the World War II.

Beijing is highly sensitive about Japan’s bloody invasion and occupation of China during the war.

Yesterday the foreign ministry expressed its “serious concern and dissatisfaction” about the gesture.

But today the ministry is confirming Chinese Premier Wen Jiaboa’s invitation for Mr Aso to visit Beijing on the weekend will stand.

The two leaders are expected to hold talks on jointly combating the global economic downturn.

BEIJING, April 13 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ — China TransInfo Technology Corp., (Nasdaq: CTFO - News), (”China TransInfo” or “the Company”), a leading provider of public transportation information systems technology and comprehensive solutions in the People’s Republic of China (”PRC”), today announced that the Company has signed a contract with the Beijing Transportation Information Center.

Chinese competition authorities are holding up the acquisition of Lucite, a UK acrylics maker, by a Japanese materials group in the latest example of Beijing flexing its muscles over an international deal.

The Japanese group, Mitsubishi Rayon, had agreed to the $1.6bn (£1.09bn) take-over in November and originally said it expected to complete the deal by January.

Several people involved told the Financial Times that China’s ministry of commerce (Mofcom) had withheld its approval - the sole antitrust regulator worldwide to do so.

China drew widespread criticism last month by rejecting a planned $2.4bn takeover by Coca-Cola of Huiyuan, the largest Chinese juice producer. Last year it extracted concessions from InBev, the Belgian brewer, in return for approving its acquisition of America’s Anheuser-Busch.

As in the InBev case, neither party in the Mitsubishi Rayon-Lucite deal is based in China. But both companies have sales and manufacturing operations in the country and require Mofcom’s approval to combine them.

Foreign observers said a move by the Chinese government to block or impose conditions on the Mitsubishi deal would create new concerns over protectionism as a force in Beijing’s antimonopoly regime.

“Following the InBev/Anheuser-Busch and Coke/Huiyuan cases, we have come to assume that the government will watch out for perceived threats to Chinese brands - understandable maybe when you have to deal with a public where chauvinism is widespread,” said an adviser to a foreign industrial group in China. “But if we are now talking about rayon producers, we get into the much broader field of protecting domestic enterprises against foreign competition no matter what.”

A new Chinese antitrust law that came into effect last August gives Mofcom wide latitude to block deals on economic and national security grounds.

One banker said China’s “protectionist” use of the law, particularly in international deals where it was not the primary regulator, constituted “a threat to global M&A activity”.

Mofcom was not available for comment.

A statement on Mitsubishi Rayon’s website said it had “received the necessary antitrust approvals from almost all relevant antitrust authorities with one exception”. It did not name the exception and declined to comment further.

If the takeover were completed, Mitsubishi Rayon would control roughly 40 per cent of the global production capacity for methyl methacrylates, an acrylic product used to make resins and plastics. Lucite, a specialist in the material, has 25 per cent of the market.

China’s ability to put its stamp on international business deals has roots in its rapid economic rise, but has been amplified by the global recession, which has left it one of the few growing sources of demand for goods and capital.

Mitsubishi has invested $230m in three Chinese ventures since 2005. It reported income in non-Japan Asia as a whole of Y62bn (£422m) in the business year to March 2008. Although the figure was just one-20th of its takings in Japan, it accounted for all of its earnings growth for the year.

Lucite, which is controlled by Charterhouse Development Capital, a UK buy-out group, maintains two Chinese sales offices and a manufacturing plant in Caojing, outside Shanghai.

Additional reporting by Kathrin Hille in Beijing

Beijing’s decision to put the squeeze on Coca-Cola’s proposed $2.4bn acquisition of Huiyuan Juice, in what would have been the biggest foreign takeover of a Chinese company, is tin-headed. Not only does the landmark decision, the biggest test so far of anti-monopoly legislation adopted last August, send a signal that China is closed for serious business. It also provides potent ammunition to foreign governments already expressing nervousness about Chinese forays abroad. The upshot is likely to be fewer cross-border deals involving what at the moment is the world’s only large dynamic economy, and a retreat into protectionism on all sides. That is precisely what Chinese leaders have been preaching against. It is also the kind of action that contributed to the 1930s global Depression.

The terse, one-page rejection of Coke’s bid issued by the woefully understaffed anti-monopoly section of the Ministry of Commerce lacks clarity. It cited Article 28 of the newly adopted anti-monopoly code, which gives authority to act “where a concentration has or may have the effect of eliminating or restricting competition”. The regulators appear to have put heavy emphasis on the word “may”, and rather less on that of “concentration”, apt though it is for a juice takeover. Although Coke controls nearly 50 per cent of the fizzy drink market, it has just 8 per cent of the juice segment. Even with Huiyuan’s less than 20 per cent share that would not constitute a monopoly under most definitions. The regulator expressed concerns that Coke might bundle its drinks offerings. But it could have targeted such abuse much more precisely.

Beijing, facing a slowing economy and fearful of social unrest, has been more paternalistic. But blocking the deal is not in China’s national interest. Chinese companies have been on a buying spree, snapping up mineral and hydrocarbons resources around the world. That opens Beijing to charges of double standards. Recently, this paper argued that Chinalco’s $19.5bn bid to raise its stake in Rio Tinto should not be opposed on nationalist grounds – arguments that are hard to defend when China is picking a fight over fruit juice. Beijing cannot have it both ways.