New Delhi: Amid the Chinese hegemonic strategies and its souring relationship within Taiwan and India, New Delhi is considering for trade talks with Taiwan that would further deepen India's relationship with the island nation.
According to sources, Taiwan has sought trade talks with India for several years, but the NDA led government has been reluctant to move ahead because it would involve a messy fight with China once any pact is registered at the World Trade Organization.
It is learnt that support is growing within the Indian government to formally start talks on a trade deal with Taiwan as the relation with China of both countries are getting deteriorated.
Taiwan’s new southbound policy is seeing a new surge in development because, under the policy, Taiwan is looking at setting up large scale production bases in India, in line with a surge in the New Delhi Taipei engagement.
Taiwan's New Southbound Policy is a policy initiative introduced by President Tsai Ing-wen after she came to power as the president of Taiwan in May 2016.
Analyst says that it is interesting to see India-Taiwan relationship growing and also difficult to connect the dots because India’s sudden interest in Taiwan, has come after a decade of Taiwan trying to appeal to India for being a source of Taiwanese investments.
Speaking to ETV Bharat, Narayanan Raviprasad, Associate Professor at Centre for East Asian Studies, JNU said, “India was wary of inviting Taiwanese investments into India because of India’s northern neighbour. India has been going through a process of ‘1962 phobia’ and is not able to get over the loss that India suffered in 1962 with China and perhaps, China has understood the mental template of India, hence, India is wary of inviting Taiwan".
“But after the Galwan valley clash and growing Chinese aggression and its illegal claims over land, the Indian government has decided that it is time India should approach Taiwan for investments because Taiwan in its ‘Go South Policy’ since 2009-2010 decided that their investments should not be only focused on the mainland China. The 'Go South Policy' initially began in Southeast Asia under the rule of the then President Ma-Ying-Jeou”, Raviprasad explained.
Taiwanese as a whole wish to slowly shift its investments from mainland China to other parts of Asia and India is very important because of its large market. Taiwan prefers to invest in the southern parts of India including states like Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu.
The academician highlighted that India-Taiwan can also partner with each other in the development of Information Technology. “Besides, India as chair of WHO executive board should lead by inviting Taiwan in WHO as Taiwan has, perhaps, the best health system in Asia and the world. This is the time India should insist upon the world that Taiwan cannot be kept on the margins. This is how India can play a role when it comes to enhancing India-Taiwan relation and it needs to be done in a professional and managerial way”, he points out.
Besides, education, tourism, civil engineering, smart agriculture, precision medicine, skills training and industrial automation offer great opportunities for collaboration.
Also Read: India must treat Taiwan as a strategic partner: Expert
It, however, deserves a special mention that India and Taiwan in 2018 signed an updated bilateral investment agreement in a bid to further expand economic ties. Trade between them grew 18% to $7.2 billion in 2019, according to the Ministry of Commerce.
A trade deal with Taiwan would help India’s goal of seeking greater investments in technology and electronics. Moreover, reports say that earlier this month, the centre approved firms including Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group, Wistron Corp. and Pentagon corp, as the government looks to attract investment worth more than 10.5 trillion rupees for Smartphone production over five years.
According to reports, any formal talks with India would amount to a big win for Taiwan, which has suggested beginning trade negotiations with most major economies due to pressure from China. Like most countries, India doesn’t formally recognize Taiwan, with the two governments maintaining unofficial diplomatic missions in the form of “representative offices”.
Raviprasad further underlined that the reason why India should encourage Taiwan for investments because Taiwan is one of the leading producers of semiconductors, petro-chemicals, wireless communication equipment, television and computers.
Taiwan based company Qualcomm which assembles approx 90% of Apple smartphones whose factories are based in China, is looking for relocating some of the companies to India.
The expert further suggested that Taiwan can play a supportive role in ‘Quad’ along with other countries including the US, Japan, Australia and India in countering China in Indo-pacific and that India must push for it. Taiwan is a realm of mainland China which has diplomatic recognitions mostly in countries in South-Pacific.
Also Read: Beijing preparing to invade Taiwan, says defence experts
