Japan was willing in 2016 to move forward with FTA talks: Kawashima

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/05/21
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Taiwan missed a chance to sign an FTA with Japan in 2016, says a Japanese academic. (By Central News Agency)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Democratic Progressive Party government missed an opportunity to sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Japan when it came to power in 2016 because it failed to resolve the issue of the ban on food imports from Japanese regions hit by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, a Japanese academic said Monday (May 20).

Tokyo University Professor Shin Kawashima was speaking about recent developments in Taiwan-Japan relations at a seminar hosted by the Foreign Press Center Japan, the Liberty Times reported.

The Fukushima disaster was followed by large-scale donations from Taiwan and by bilateral agreements, leading to new opportunities, according to Kawashima. However, when President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was elected in 2016, the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hoped she would end the import ban on food from five prefectures affected by the nuclear disaster, the academic said. The ban was seen as going counter to Taiwan’s earlier generous offers of relief aid to the region, according to Kawashima.
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