Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: takoradee/WikiCommons/CC BY 2.5
CONCERNS HAVE been raised about China exerting market influence on Taiwan’s agricultural sector. This is specifically regarding the fruit atemoya, which is a specialty product of Taitung.
95% of atemoya exports from Taiwan go to China, which is a market worth 1.5 billion NT and consists of 13,500 tonnes annually. Atemoya has been in the top three food exports from Taiwan for the past decade.
Though receiving less attention than other products that Beijing has banned in the past, such as grouper, sugar apple, wax apple, and pineapple, at times, Beijing has sought to pressure Taiwan by using atemoya imports in the past. In September 2021, atemoya imports from Taiwan were suspended on the basis of pesticide concerns. While the ban was relaxed in 2023, a steep 20% tariff and 8% value-added tax were later imposed in September 2024.
In particular, Taitung County Magistrate Yao Ching-ling is currently under investigation for participating in the annual Strait Forum held in Xiamen. Yao’s travel to Xiamen was not approved by the Mainland Affairs Council for the Strait Forum, as a result of which Yao participated by video instead. In the course of this, Yao advertised atemoya from Taitung.
Consequently, Yao is now under investigation for potentially having violated the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area. Other KMT politicians, such as Taipei mayor Chiang Wan-an, have defended Yao’s participation as only intended to bolster trade between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. On the other hand, Yao is criticized for attempting to increase the dependency of the atemoya industry on the Chinese market, so as to allow for increased Chinese political influence over Taiwanese farmers. In the course of past visits to China, Yao is known to have changed her itinerary, met with Taiwan Affairs Office director Song Tao, and refused to report to the National Immigration Agency about her movements.
There have been a number of occasions in past years in which the Chinese government has abruptly hit out at Taiwanese agricultural products with bans. These bans are mostly thought to be politically motivated. In February 2021, the Chinese government cited the discovery of mealy bugs as a pretext for banning pineapple imports from Taiwan.
It was thought that the timing of the announcement of the pineapple ban was deliberate, seeing as this was announced shortly before pineapple harvest season, which runs from February to June. Moreover, the cases of mealy bugs being found in pineapples sent from Taiwan took place from March to May 2020, but the Chinese government waited nearly a year before acting on it in February 2021.
The Chinese government was taking advantage of the fact that China had become a major market for pineapple exports for Taiwan, constituting 95.2% of pineapple exports at a value of 155.23 million USD between 2018 and 2020. It proved unusual to claim mealy bugs as a pretext for the bans, as China only found 13 instances of mealy bugs among pineapple export batches, while 99.79% of pineapple exports passed inspections,
Similar bans occurred afterward with wax apple and sugar apple imports, in which mealy bugs were again cited as the reason for the bans. Aquaculture product grouper, a fish, later faced a similar ban.
The Tsai administration responded to the pineapple ban by calling on Taiwanese consumers to buy Taiwanese pineapples, as well as by rediverting Taiwanese fruit products to other markets, such as Japan. That China hit out at Taiwanese agricultural products for political reasons would be with the aim of convincing Taiwanese farmers–an influential demographic–to vote KMT, as well as suggesting to others in society that they should also vote KMT in order to maintain stability in access to the Chinese market.
But China’s actions would also have the effect of showing Taiwanese farmers that they could be arbitrarily shut out of the Chinese market at any time, for no reason at all, perhaps pushing them to diversify to other, less risky markets. In this sense, moves by the KMT to cement trade dependency for certain fruit products on the Chinese market leave them open to trying to expand Chinese influence over the agricultural industry, even if it occurs in a way that perhaps benefits them electorally.