The mainland suspended the import of cherimoya and lotus mist from Taiwan, and Tsai Ing-wen's response has major flaws

The General Administration of Customs issued a notice on its website to suspend the import of soursop (known as Shakya in Taiwan) and lotus mist into the mainland, and at the end of February this year, the mainland also announced that it would suspend the import of pineapples from Taiwan to the mainland from March.

The detection of harmful organisms is on the one hand, and on the other hand, nature is a small microcosm of the current cross-strait relations.

To analyze this incident, we need to briefly review the pineapple storm a few months ago.

At that time, the mainland announced that it would stop the sale of pineapples to the mainland in Taiwan, and the Taiwan government immediately came out to express its position, condemning the Chinese mainland as usual, and immediately stressing that "it will assist farmers in selling them to overseas areas outside the mainland."

This was followed by a wave of "Great Internal Propaganda", including: encouraging people to buy pineapples, local governments responding to buy more pineapples, and even offering policies to help farmers sell pineapples to Japan: this way of assistance is to subsidize a certain amount of freight for every kilogram. If it is sold to Australia, every kilogram of air transport can even subsidize NT$105 (about 20 yuan).

There are subsidies, naturally the number of Japanese customers buying Taiwan pineapples will also rise, at this time can carry out the next step of publicity: look, there is no mainland market, Taiwan pineapples are also sold in Japan!

The media will basically report that "without the mainland, Japan has become the largest customer of Taiwanese pineapple". For the unreasonable people, the government naturally passed.

However, is this really the case?

The mystery behind the news

It is not known how long the government will spend money from all taxpayers to subsidize the sale of pineapples to Australia, Japan and other regions. The sustainability and cost performance of this strategy is actually not high.

In addition, the so-called "Japan replaced the mainland as the first customer", according to the data of the relevant departments in Taiwan, in terms of the comparison of the two periods from January to August 2020 and January to August 2021, the total amount of "pineapple, fresh food" exported from Taiwan to Chinese mainland from January to August 2020 was 48 million US dollars.

From January to August 2021, Taiwan's "pineapple, fresh food" was exported to Japan (the so-called mainland alternative), totaling only $22 million. This gap is not a little bit.

Naturally, everyone will say that there are many people on the mainland and a large market, and it is impossible to compare japan alone.

If we all understand that the mainland people have a large market, and Taiwan pineapple is indeed delicious and competitive, then why is it always a breeze: anyway, it is good to sell it outside the mainland?

The total amount of pineapple exported from Taiwan to Japan has indeed increased, but behind this, it is actually far from "replacing the mainland market". The Taiwan Government's words are mysterious in order to tell the people that "it is all right, and there is nothing wrong with my cross-strait policy."

Three steps for the Tsai Ing-wen government

Soursop, known in Taiwan as Shakya, take a look at its sales figures. Since the mainland banned the sale of pineapples to the mainland, cherimoya has remained a popular product. From January to August 2021, Taiwan's "Shakya, Fresh Food" sold a total of about $46 million in mainland China.

Taiwan's Shakya is also mainly domestically sold, that is, the Taiwanese eat a lot of themselves, and some of them are exported, and in the total exports, Chinese mainland also account for more than 90%.

Lotus fog is a similar principle.

Taiwanese fruits such as cherimoya and lotus mist, most of them can not collide, careful transportation, there is a certain cost, and need to keep fresh, Chinese mainland is Taiwan's main agricultural products and fruits exported, is doomed.

This time, the Taiwan government will probably do the same three steps:

The first step, "It's okay, most of these fruits are sold domestically, and they will also help farmers resell them elsewhere."

The second step is to call for increased domestic sales, buy up everywhere!

The third step is to issue news soon after, "Japan becomes the largest sales place" and so on.

All the actions of the Taiwan Government are just to prove that it "did not do anything wrong" and that "there is no mutual trust between the two sides of the strait, and it does not matter."

Agricultural products, in the big politics, are indeed only the slightest part of the influence under the fluctuations of cross-strait relations. However, behind this, it is all related to the livelihood of farmers.

#Taiwan ##海关总署: Suspend taiwanese cherimoya and lotus mist imports into the mainland #