Taiwan government may reject ‘one China’ but first-half exports to mainland, Hong Kong reaped US$66 billion

Taiwan trade is robust but it remains vulnerable to Taipei-Beijing tension, US-China hostility and the pandemic

Exports to Asean and India dropped in an affront to President Tsai Ing-wen’s New Southbound Policy to cut economic reliance on China, says observer

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Taiwanese exports, such as seen at Keelung Harbour in Taiwan, remain strong, particularly to mainland China, despite cross-strait tension. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 9:00am, 27 Jul 2020Updated: 11:38pm, 27 Jul 2020

Taiwan’s trade with mainland China has soared in the past six months and is expected to hit a record amount this year, despite deteriorating cross-strait relations.

But observers warn the boom could be short-lived if Taiwan is forced to stop its hi-tech exports to mainland China at the request of the United States, which is having heated disputes with Beijing on almost all fronts.

Boosted by strong demand for chips and other electronic and telecoms products, Taiwan’s exports to China, including Hong Kong, grew to US$66.8 billion in the first half of this year, up 9.8 per cent from the same period last year, according to the island’s finance ministry.

Statistics provided by the ministry on July 17 showed that such exports accounted for 42.3 per cent of the island’s total exports, up 3.6 percentage points over the same period last year and a record high for the past decade.

The self-ruled island’s exports to the US grew 4.5 per cent to US$23 billion in this period on strong demand for information and telecoms products, while exports to Japan increased 3.5 per cent to US$11.7 billion on demand for electronic, information, visual and audio products.

The ministry’s figures showed that exports to the US and Japan accounted for 14.5 per cent and 7.4 per cent of all exports, respectively.

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