Taiwan announces tech export rules over South Africa office dispute

Taipei, Sept. 23 (CNA) Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) on Tuesday announced new export controls requiring prior approval for 47 products -- including integrated circuits (IC), chips and memory -- shipped to South Africa.

In a public notice, the MOEA said the measure was a response to South Africa's repeated downgrading and renaming of Taiwan's representative offices in the country, which Taipei considers to be driven by political pressure from Beijing intended to reduce Taiwan's standing internationally.

The ministry stated that South Africa's actions "posed dangers to the protection of national security and public safety, and have caused or may cause adverse effects on the normal development of Taiwan's economic and trade activities."

The MOEA explained that it is amending regulations covering exports from free trade ports so that 47 designated products bound for South Africa must first obtain ministry approval.

The list includes diode chips and wafers, excluding photosensitive diodes or light-emitting diodes (LED), as well as transistor chips and wafers, mask ROM chips for hybrid integrated circuits, other LEDs and dynamic random-access memory integrated circuits (DRAM).

The MOEA explained that South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) unilaterally announced the renaming and downgrading of Taiwan's two representative offices on July 21.

South Africa changed the office names to the "Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg" and the "Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town" and began referring to them as "international organizations" instead of "a foreign representation in South Africa."