Taiwan Church News
3203 Edition
July 15-21, 2013
Headline News

Reported by Chiou Kuo-rong
As the co-ordination meeting between administration and congress inside Chinese Nationalist Party(KMT) had decided to hold anextra legislative session in the end of July, with a target to pass the controversial law of "cross strait service trade agreement", several civil groups held a press conference opposing this rush and irresponsible action on July 9th in Legislative Yuan.
These civil groups included the Taiwan Platform to Protect Democracy, Taiwan Labor Front, Citizen's Congress Watch, Cross-Strait Agreement Watch, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, Foundation of New Knowledge for Women, Preparation Office for Foundation of Cultural Genesis, ROC Union for the Well Wares of the Aged, ROC Union for the Disabled, Union of Civil Watch on Health Care.
Several university professors, from legal and economics departments, strongly criticized the illegal due process andirrational economics policy behind this rush extra legislative session.
"To hold extra legislative session arbitrarily is to destroy the constitution framework", remarked by Chang Chia-yin who is alaw professor at Shih Hsin University. He pointed out that, though it is constitutional to hold extra session according to article 69 of the constitution, yet article 68 specifies that such extra session event should be exceptional to handle the urgency at its top priority. Chang said: since KMT opened extra session frequently to meet her political agenda in recent years and this service trade agreement is not urgent at all, KMT's maneuver is totally unacceptable.
"We oppose the Ma Ying-jeou administration’s inappropriate use of extra legislative sessions as well as the hasty passage ofthe service trade agreement", National Taiwan University professor Yen Chueh-an spoke to the media.

Chen Chi-chung, an economist at National Chung Hsing University, warned that the article mentioned in service trade agreementallowing the appearance of "natural person" is actually meant an opening of Taiwan labor market to accept Chinese white collar labor force. Based on the deal terms in STA, which allow a Chinese company with 3.3 million USD investment to bring in 45 Chinese labor to enter Taiwan, then it is estimated that 360,000 Chinese white collar labors would flood into Taiwan if 1% of 820,000 current Taiwan companies were merged by Chinese capital. This would a great impact to Taiwan labor market, yet there isn't any serious response from Ma government.

In addition, Chen compared Taiwan's preparation to enter WTO in 1990 with current proceedings on the cross strait service tradeagreement. He said, in 1990 Taiwan was well prepared to absorb the shock with 100 billions NTD to compensate for the agricultural damage and loss. Yet, the wide impact of STA is more serious than Taiwan's entrance into WTO, Ma Goverment only prepared 90 billions NTD to respond the potential risks without any concrete measures. Facing this uncharted troubled water,lawmakers barely can not do any checks and balances toward this bill.

On the 2nd meeting of the 58th PCT Central Committee held on July 9th, Rev. Lyim Hong-tiong, General Secretary of PCT GAO,expressed his great concern toward this social economical issue which would bring a serious impact toward Taiwan society. He urged all Central Committee members to show their utmost concerns to this event.

Rev. Lyim warned: the Chinese people could emigrate into Taiwan in great volume, after the private agreement between KMT andCCP and ratification of this STA. And once China could successfully deliver their voluminous economical emigrants into Taiwan, these people would soon get their citizenship to vote and affect Taiwan's referendum vote results.
Translated by Peter Wolfe