Taiwan suspends tech export rules after S. Africa agrees to talk: MOFA

Taipei, Sept. 25 (CNA) Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Thursday said it has asked the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) to suspend issuing a public notice regarding an impending export control on shipping chips to South Africa because the latter has agreed to talk over a year-long dispute regarding Taiwan's office in the African country.

The MOEA originally announced on Tuesday that it would soon implement new export controls requiring prior approval for 47 products -- including integrated circuits (IC), chips, and memory -- shipped to South Africa, effective in late November.

It would need to submit the notice to the Cabinet's online gazette system for a public notice period of two months before the export control measures take effect.

The impending restrictions are meant as a countermeasure following South Africa's repeated downgrading and renaming of Taiwan's two representative offices in the country, which Taipei believes were done amid Chinese pressure to belittle Taiwan's sovereignty status.

On Thursday morning, however, the MOEA said Tuesday's public notice was being put on its own bulletin system only, and the ministry has yet to submit the notice to the Cabinet's online gazette system.

After consulting with the MOFA, it decided that it would not put the public notice on the Cabinet's online gazette system for the time being, without elaborating.

MOFA, meanwhile, said in a separate press release that it asked MOEA to suspend submitting the notice to the Cabinet's gazette online system because it has just been told by the South African government that the latter wishes to engage in talks with Taiwan over the Taiwan office dispute.

The Taiwan office dispute originally occurred in October 2024 when the South African government began its unilateral push to categorize the Taiwan representative office, officially named as the Taipei Liaison Office in the Republic of South Africa, as a "trade office" only and move it from Pretoria, its political and executive capital, to the commercial capital, Johannesburg.

It initially set the deadline as October 2024 before extending it to the end of March.

MOFA protested the move, calling for talks between the two sides, but the South African government has yet to answer Taipei's demands.

The South African side later unilaterally changed the name of the Taipei office on its Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) website from the "Taipei Liaison Office" to the "Taipei Commercial Office" in early March.

On July 21, DIRCO further announced the renaming and downgrading of the Taipei main representative office in Pretoria and a branch office in Cape Town.

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

Despite the South African government's unilateral decisions, Taiwan's representative office in South Africa is maintaining normal operations in the capital of Pretoria and continues to provide necessary services to its nationals.

Taiwan has accused China of being behind the South African government's decision to ask the Taipei office to relocate and rename, citing the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 and the "one-China principle."

Resolution 2758 was adopted by the 26th U.N. General Assembly in 1971 to address the issue of China's representation in the world body and resulted in the Republic of China, Taiwan's official name, losing its seat at the U.N. to the People's Republic of China.