Taiwan Cross-Strait Directory: Imports, Exports and Investments

The Bureau of the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office needs and encourages Taiwanese investment in the PRC but also seems to believe that closer economic ties will enhance reunification on Beijing's terms. In that view, China's economic growth will help it absorb Taiwan.

Because of entrepots and other third-party arrangements, exact trade and investment figures are difficult to acquire. In any case, the prospect of economic absorption into the PRC has evidently also occurred to the ROC on Taiwan. In mid-2001, Taiwan imposed a limit of $50 million on single investments in China. And under the "no haste, be patient" policy enunciated by the former KMT-led government, high-technology and infrastructure projects are illegal. Those prohibitions failed to prevent $60 billion of Taiwanese investments from pouring into China by way of third countries from the late 1980s through mid-2001.

• The China External Trade Development Council facilitates imports to or exports from Taiwan.
• The Chicago-based. China Online Inc. "is an independent source of business information and is not funded by any government." China Online comments on Cross-Strait developments and related issues.

• The subscription-based Nikkei Net Interactive provides Japan business news affecting Japan-Taiwan and Japan-PRC relations.

• Influential U.S.-based corporations doing business in the PRC also belong to the US-ROC (Taiwan) Business Council. The U.S. is Taiwan's largest trading partner, taking about a fourth of its exports and supplying about a fifth of its imports. In 2000, Taiwan was the seventh-largest export market for the US while the PRC ranked eleventh.