BEIJING: Taiwan's deputy economic affairs minister announced plans to "deeply engage" with India and revealed that at least 20 MoUs were signed between business organizations from the island and India on Thursday in New Delhi. .
Chen Chern-chi, who traveled to India with the island's leading businessmen, expressed support for New Delhi's Make in India initiative and expressed optimism for a possible free-trade agreement. Chen Chern-chi called India "very fertile ground" for Taiwanese businesses.
We cooperate with regional partners. We rely heavily on the Indian government to help us invest in this country, Chen said.
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In Taiwan's New Southbound Policy, a regional initiative to build wider ties with ASEAN, South Asia as well as Australia and New Zealand, to reduce its dependence on China, the minister vowed to "emphasize" India.
Chen made his remarks at the 2022 India-Taiwan Industrial Cooperation Summit, organized by Taiwan's Chinese National Federation of Industries and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
According to Gauranglal Das, director general of the India Taipei Association, India has been "somewhat absent" from Taiwanese industries that are "extremely externally oriented and have established their presence around the world". According to Das, the time has come for both sides to "unleash our true potential".
Due to the nature of geopolitics, geopolitical changes and supply-chain restructuring, Taiwan should adopt a new perspective on India.
Baushuan Geer, head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India and a representative of Taiwan, urged India and Taiwan to "strengthen" a free-trade agreement last week to "remove all barriers to trade and investment". and help in construction. A resilient supply chain."
In December last year, the two sides started negotiating a free trade agreement.
Of the three MoUs that were signed during the two-day visit, three pertain to enhancing cooperation in green technology production in memory chips and electronics. The specifics of the agreements are not yet known.
According to the Indian Cellular and Electronics Association, 75% of the chips used in Indian electronic devices such as smartphones are made in Taiwan.
India, one of Asia's fastest growing economies, has been forced to ramp up domestic capacity in critical technology due to rising tensions between China and the US over the coronavirus pandemic and Taiwan.
According to Harsh V Pant, vice president of studies and foreign policy at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank, India's "old baseline" for Taiwan, which focuses on trade, tourism and other "controversial topics", is "not long-term". Till reflects the reality in this area."
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Pant continued, "A successful Chinese blockade or invasion of Taiwan would disrupt its semiconductor supplies, embarrass India's allies such as Japan and the United States, strengthen Beijing's position in the Western Pacific, and create a free and open Indo-Pacific. -will prove fatal to any idea of ​​the Pacific region.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state, Vedanta Ltd., and Taiwan's electronics giant Foxconn, which produces most of Apple's iPhones, invested US$18.67 billion in the project in September to build India's first semiconductor fabrication plant in Gujarat. agreed to invest. By 2025-2026, the plant is projected to supply at least 30% of India's chip demand.
At its India facility in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, Taiwan's Pegatron, another contracted maker of Apple iPhones, launched a commercial mobile phone production line last month. Chen was accompanied by representatives from Pegatron and Foxconn.
The value of bilateral trade between Taiwan and India has increased recently, rising 64% from 2020 to US$7.7 billion in 2021. However, this is nothing in comparison to India's economic ties with China. In the first nine months of 2022, there was a trade of US$ 91 billion between China and India.
Although political ties between India and Taiwan have been sluggish for years due to concerns about troubling Beijing, Modi invited Taiwan's top official and its trade representative to his swearing-in ceremony in 2014 in New Delhi.
Modi has direct knowledge of the island. During his tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2011, he welcomed Taiwan's largest business delegation to India. Taiwanese officials visited Vibrant Gujarat, the annual business networking conference, in 2012. As General Secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1999, Modi traveled to Taiwan.
Therefore, it was not unexpected that a BJP representative attended after winning the 2016 Taiwan presidential election for Sai Ing-opening Wen.
The India-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Forum was established a few months later by a dozen Indian legislators, but it has largely remained dormant. A delegation of female parliamentarians from Taiwan was later hosted by India.
The militaries of China and India engaged in a border standoff along the contentious Line of Actual Control in Doklam the following year. The foreign affairs committee of the Indian parliament urged the government to reconsider its "deferential foreign policy toward China" in 2018.
It suggested that India should "consider using all options, including its relations with Taiwan," if China was unwilling to change its position on border issues.
The border dispute between China and India, which dates to their war in 1962, is still unresolved. The situation is still tense despite the fact that troops have started to disengage after two years of negotiations since border clashes in 2020 claimed the lives of at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers.
On the fringes of the UN General Assembly in New York in September, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi appeared eager to avoid each other amid a flurry of diplomatic overtures.
The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) association of five emerging economies was established following the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 to encourage collaboration between developing nations. The two only briefly interacted during the BRICS gathering.
India has steadily gotten closer to the US and its allies over the years as China's military power and economic clout have grown. In 2017, New Delhi joined the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, a four-nation alliance led by the US and featuring Australia and Japan that aims to confront China.
More recently, when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in a contentious manner, India did not reaffirm its adherence to the one-China policy, much to China's dismay. Since 2010, it has not done so.
However, experts have expressed doubt that New Delhi will completely reject Beijing. India has not yet publicly endorsed Taiwan's application for observer status at organisations like the World Health Organization.
“Public enthusiasm and semiconductors do not make a bilateral relationship,” said Pant of the Observer Research Foundation. “India has approached ties with Taiwan cautiously, aware that it is testing China’s reddest line.”
