Political tensions hamper FTA talks
- By He Shan
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 10, 2014
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Zhang Jianhua, chairman of Hiking Group and a National People's Congress deputy. [China.org.cn] |
Trilateral free trade agreement (FTA) talks between China, Japan and South Korea have hit a snag as the Sino-Japanese relationship has gone sour over island disputes and Japan's Yasukuni shrine visit.
Zhang Jianhua, a National People's Congress (NPC) deputy and chairman of Hiking Group, a trade conglomerate based in Shandong Province, told China.org.cn that the FTA talks are unlikely to make concrete progress in the short term, but China and South Korea will gear up their bilateral talks about a pilot trade zone.
He said, "Because China and Korea complement each other in terms of industrial structure and seldom have any political rifts, their talks can move forward more quickly than the three-party negotiations."
The China-Japan-South Korea free trade agreement negotiations were launched in November 2012 and the agreement is expected to enormously benefit the participants as the combined GDPs of China, Japan, and South Korea represent 20 percent of the world total.
The fourth round of talks was held in Seoul in early March, and analysts considered the fact that the talks were able to take place at all as progress, given the current sour relationships between Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine last December sparked outrage in both China and South Korea, who saw the move as a blatant disregard for those who suffered from Japanese wartime atrocities.
Zhang Jianhua commented that the FTA talks are more about politics than economics, and said that China and South Korea have been keen to push forward their talks, as they are considering building a pilot trade zone between the two nations.
"The pilot trade zone may be established in Jiaozhou City in Shandong Province, China, which is in geographical proximity to both South Korea and Japan," he said."It will be a beta zone for free trade zone in the future."
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