Taiwan, China spar over cross-strait economic dependence

Taipei, July 2 (CNA) Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has said the country's economic dependence on China is at a historic low, while Beijing on Thursday rejected that assessment and insisted that cross-strait economic ties remain close.

In a statement issued on Monday, MAC, Taiwan's top agency handling cross-strait affairs, said cross-strait trade and economic ties have undergone "structural changes" in recent years.

The agency said Taiwan's exports to China and Hong Kong as a share of its total exports declined from 43.9 percent in 2020 to 26.6 percent in 2025.

The share of Taiwan's total outbound investment going to China also fell steadily from a peak of 83.8 percent in 2010 to 3.8 percent in 2025 and further to 0.9 percent in the first five months of 2026, MAC said.

It cited factors such as U.S.-China strategic competition, China's economic slowdown and Beijing's economic coercion against Taiwan as reasons for the shift.

As Monday marked the 16th anniversary of the signing of the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), MAC also reviewed the impact of the trade pact, which was signed by Taiwan and China in 2010 to reduce tariffs and other trade barriers between the two sides.

It said Taiwan's exports to China of goods on ECFA's "early-harvest list" -- goods given preferential tariff treatment under the pact -- fell to US$13.1 billion in 2025, accounting for 13.1 percent of Taiwan's total exports to China.

The share was down from 26.3 percent in 2016 and the lowest level since ECFA took effect, MAC noted.

While MAC's statement mainly pointed to longer-term proportional indicators as evidence of Taiwan's declining economic dependence on China, the rebuttal by China's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) on Thursday focused on recent overall cross-strait trade volume figures.

TAO Spokesperson Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) said at a news briefing in Beijing that Taiwan's economy and trade "cannot be de-Sinicized," citing figures showing that cross-strait trade reached US$314.33 billion in 2025, up 7.3 percent from a year earlier.

In the first five months of 2026, cross-strait trade totaled US$150.84 billion, up 22 percent year-on-year, she added.

Of that January-May total, China's exports to Taiwan rose 30.6 percent to US$41.87 billion, while its imports from Taiwan increased 19.1 percent to US$108.96 billion, she said.

"These figures show that cross-strait economic ties are not weakening, but strengthening," Zhu said.