A Qualitative Analysis Of The Prospects For Japan-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement

Since the end of the 20th century, FTAs in Asia-Pacific areahave been developing rapidly. In 1998, accepting the invitation ofRepublic of Korea to conclude a bilateral FTA, Japan officially commencedits FTA strategy;at the end of the 20th century, suffering from both theinternal difficulties in industry-updating and the external stress of"being fringed by the integration in Asia-Pacific", Taiwan consideredthe FTA strategy to be important to its economic development. The positivefactors that can lead to the conclusion of a Japan-Taiwan FTA are thesimilar industrial framework, the active trade and movement of peoplebetween the two economies, while such negative factors as a large numberof sensitive industries between the two and the weak mutual investmentcan postpone the conclusion of the FTA. In addition, the Japanesegovernment is behaving rather conservatively due to politicalconsiderations, which has led to the difficulties of the conclusion ofa Japan-Taiwan FTA in short run.This paper makes a qualitative analysis of the prospects for aJapan-Taiwan FTA with major focus on the economic factors such asindustrial framework, trade, investment and movement of people and minorfocus on political factors, and presents possible countermeasures for theChinese government.