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I have a dream that Frog Island can become a country where the sun never sets economically!”
What?The sun never sets in the British Empire for almost a hundred years, and there are still people who say such things?If it weren't for the three catties of water in the brain, who would have said it?
Really, this is what Lai Qingde said at the first "Candidate Political Opinion Presentation" on the evening of December 20.
In addition to the consistent "frog independence" proposition, he also vowed to brag that the industry of Frog Island would "gain a firm foothold in the democratic world" in the future.
These words also made the people who eat melons puzzled for a while, when will there be a difference between "democracy" and "undemocracy" in the ** chain?
Unexpectedly, just 10 hours later, a sledgehammer fell hard, and the kid was instantly beaten to the point where he couldn't find the north.
The mainland issued an announcement deciding to suspend tariff concessions on some products under the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement. From January 1, 2024, the application of the agreed tax rates of the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement will be suspended for 12 tariff items such as propylene and paraxylene originating in Frog Island, and will be implemented in accordance with the current relevant regulations.
In layman's terms, it is to cancel the duty-free policy for 12 kinds of products from Frog Island first. We'll see what happens next.
These 12 products are all chemical products.
Lai said in January 2023 that if elected, he would review the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) and seek more freedom** agreements with the United States and other countries. Now it's okay, we don't need you to review it, we take the initiative.
This time, we only made a small move.
In the overall ECFA, there are as many as 539 products that have been subject to tax concessions and tax reductions for Taiwan, including 521 industrial products and 18 agricultural products, of which only 12 are sprinkled with water.
Of course, if you look at the category, this move cannot be said to be a small move.
The petrochemical industry is one of the three pillar industries in the Frog Island area, employing more than 700,000 people, with an average annual output value accounting for 7% of the overall manufacturing industry. With the removal of tariff concessions on these 12 products, tariffs will revert to 1%-10%. However, we import similar goods to other countries in Southeast Asia but are duty-free, so who will buy Frog Island?
Frog Island has set up ** barriers to mainland products, and the Ministry of Commerce has been investigating since April this year. After more than half a year of investigation, the final report was finally released on December 15, and the result was that as of November 2023, a total of 2,509 products from the mainland have been banned from the mainland. The survey results were originally scheduled to end on January 12, 2024, the day before the official vote in the Frog Island area. Because our staff is more diligent and work efficiently, we investigated it in advance, and everyone applauded!
Coincidentally, after the "political opinion conference", the first batch of sanctions lists came out, mainly chemical products. When will the next batch be released, and what products will it be?Because the announcement of the Ministry of Commerce has a sentence "should be applied by the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Foodstuffs, Native Produce and Livestock, China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Metals, Metals and Chemicals and China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textiles", so you can guess according to this sentence.
The amount of chemical products imported to the mainland is about 150 billion yuan every year, and the amount of textile products is 15 billion yuan, and the mainland is the largest export area of agricultural products to the mainland. Therefore, the category of products is not many, but fine. I wonder if the Frog Island authorities have understood?
Of course, this is definitely not our sanction on Frog Island!This is just a countermeasure, because Frog Island has implemented ** barriers to the mainland, so we can't always get used to them. **When you go both ways, our family has a big business, and we can let you a little. Now that you don't go both ways with us, why should we shave our heads and get hot?
If it really us off, it's not that tax exemptions for certain items will be abolished. The entire ECFA, we can stop, anyway, it has been due for several years, and it is understandable to stop.
What's more serious, maybe there are also measures such as ** sanctions, so that the import and export volume of the two sides of the strait will be directly reduced to zero.
The big deal is that we only eat white elephant instant noodles, not Master Kong!
When the news came, the business community on the island couldn't sit still at first.
What the Petrochemical Association is most worried about is that in addition to these 12 items, there are more petrochemical products in the list, and whether the tariff preferences will also be suspended in the future. At present, the chemical products produced in Frog Island exported to the mainland account for 35% of the total export value of chemical products. The propylene products produced by Frog Island, the mainland and Hong Kong accounted for a total of 58% of Frog Island's exports73%, just this one, how much loss is involved?Now the evidence in the hands of the mainland confirms the existence of ** barriers, even if Frog Island sues the WTO, there is no way.
In addition to facing an export crisis and losing 40% of its exports, Frog Island will also lead to the decline of traditional industries such as petrochemicals, machinery and textiles, and will have to lay off a large number of workers, resulting in an increase in unemployment. Vulnerable products such as agriculture, fishery and animal husbandry will encounter greater competition. In this regard, the business community can't help but scold "Jinsun &%."
The mainland has always had economic preferences for Frog Island, commonly known as "Huitai". Because we are our compatriots, we import many goods that we don't really need, or can import from other places at a lower **, and the import duties will be reduced or even eliminated. These policies have contributed to the economic prosperity of Frog Island. The commodity competitiveness of Frog Island is not as big as imagined in the world, and the pineapple cake of Frog Island is not so delicious, but because of the mainland's policy of benefiting Taiwan, Frog Island has been given a "blood transfusion", and Frog Island has lived a comfortable life.
More than 12 years after the ECFA came into effect, the mainland tariff concessions for goods sold on Frog Island have actually been about US$8.7 billion, while the mainland has received only 9 percent tariff reductions and reductions for Taiwan$8.1 billion. In 2022, the mainland's ** deficit with Frog Island will be as high as 156.5 billion US dollars, and in the first 11 months of 2023, there will be a **deficit of 119.5 billion US dollars with Frog Island. With a GDP of hundreds of billions of dollars, Frog Island is not as good as Japan and South Korea in terms of overall scientific and technological strength, but it has long been the largest **deficit** in the motherland, and that is because the motherland does not mind giving profits, and we treat them as our own.
However, Frog Island is not grateful, and does not even treat it equally, but has set up many obstacles to the import of products from the mainland, and imposed severe market access restrictions on goods, capital, and labor on the mainland. According to incomplete statistics, as of last year, Frog Island has adopted various restrictive measures on 1,063 agricultural products and 1,392 industrial products.
In the ECFA "Early Harvest List" project, the mainland has reduced 539 taxes on Taiwan, including petrochemicals, textiles, machinery and other products that are urgently needed and concerned by Frog Island, while Frog Island has only opened 267 items to the mainland, especially insisting on not opening up agricultural products. They still prohibit the import of mainland eggs during the "egg shortage", and they also comprehensively **snail noodles in the name of endangering safety, and even common snacks are **.
Frog Island pursues the principle of "standing up for the sake of both the mainland's economic policy" with regard to the mainland, and on the one hand, it enjoys the dividends brought about by the mainland's policy of favoring Taiwan, and on the other hand, it tries to seek decoupling from the mainland's economy. In their own words, it is to "avoid integrating into the mainland economic circle, and then continue to stay in the American economic circle".
Thus, their contradictory practices can be explained.
When the ECFA was first signed in 2010, Cai Yanyan once attacked the ECFA as an "unequal treaty that humiliates Taiwan", and explicitly promised to organize a "referendum" to revoke it if it is in power in the future. In fact, this is a statement to the American father, and later Cai Feiyan served as the leader of the Frog Island region for two terms, and in the past 8 years, he has never taken any "referendum" or revocation action on the ECFA, but has enjoyed the benefits brought by the ECFA. In March 2014, Cai Fly Mosquito supported, the outbreak of "Sunflower"** led to the miscarriage of the "Cross-Strait Agreement on Trade in Services", and finally only sold products, not services, and it was a large number of people on Frog Island who suffered.
Lai stressed the importance of "economic decoupling" from the mainland. He even falsely claimed, "In recent years, the island's agricultural products have strengthened export sales to the United States, Japan, South Korea, Canada and other countries, and the results have continued to increase. As everyone knows, when the people of Frog Island swallow the bitter fruit of "Lai Pig" and "Blessed Food", they have already been scolding, but Frog Island has not succeeded in joining the economic organization they claim to be able to participate in. The so-called "export sales" have achieved little success.
In the more than 7 years since Cai Fly came to power, the proportion of exports to the mainland in the Frog Island area has increased from 39 to 395% rises to a maximum of 439%, with an annual surplus of more than $100 billion. Frog Island is to use the money earned from the two sides of the strait to engage in "frog independence" activities, especially arms procurement. Since Tsai took office in 2016, he has spent about $40 billion on arms purchases, setting a new record for military purchases by all leaders of Frog Island. They spend our money, order huge arms from the United States, buy American "bullets", and then use them against us. For disobedient children, no matter how tolerant the mother is, there are times when she can't bear it!
Now, for the first time, the mainland has raised economic sanctions, which means that the next step for those who can no longer bear it is unwilling to endure it. However, the future of the people on the island has to be decided by themselves, and this sanction has nothing to do with their election.
It's just that entrepreneurs on the island want to make money, and the people on the island want to work. Whether the ECFA can be renewed or not, and how important it is, has to be broken up by people who understand it on the island. At this "political opinion conference", Hou Youyi has already said that if he is elected, he will "restart the ECFA, resolve the dispute, and gradually promote relevant negotiations after the completion of the cross-strait agreement supervision regulations." ”
So, as a citizen of the island, if you voted with your feet, who would you choose?