Taiwan’s Trade and Investments in the Hyper-Globalized World, its Participation in the Activities of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in other International Organizations

Abstract

Economic development of Taiwan (Republic of China, ROC) has largely based during the last 60 years on Export Oriented Development Model, though its forms developed deeply during the last decades. At the same time, diplomatic isolation makes Taiwan unable to receive and hold full-fledged membership in international organizations or to join international agreements. A peculiar exception is the World Trade Organization (WTO), which Taiwan could join using a special name of “Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu (Chinese Taipei)” which was not objected by the People’s Republic of China, PRC (Mainland China). However, Taiwan still has difficulties when trying to benefit from its membership in other international organizations. But today, in the time of hyper-globalization, foreign direct investments (FDIs) are getting increasingly important and international commerce is getting to be more and more negligeable, the WTO membership is not as important as it used to be some years or decades ago. Today, OECD is perhaps more important, therefore, Taiwan should focus on this organization in the future. However, as memberships of Taiwan in the international organizations were influenced mainly by political factors, it is also possible that new diplomatic, political and military developments might change the international atmosphere, and especially in the time of increasing tensions between the USA and the European Union on one hand, and the People’s Republic of China and Russia on the other, in the near future, Taiwan might return again to some of these international organizations.