MTAG: TAIWAN EXPORT CONTROL IMPLEMENTATION AND

S E C R E T AIT TAIPEI 000855

SIPDIS

SIPDIS



STATE FOR EAP/TC AND ISN/MTR

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/13/2026
TAGS: ECCT PARM MTCRE JP TW
SUBJECT: MTAG: TAIWAN EXPORT CONTROL IMPLEMENTATION AND
LEFTOVER GAS

REF: A. STATE 36441


B. STATE 30954

C. STATE 21176

D. AIT TAIPEI 00171

E. STATE 008195

F. AIT TAIPEI 00141

Classified By: AIT ACTING DIRECTOR DAVID KEEGAN, REASONS 1.4 B, C, D.


1. (S) Summary: In a March 9 meeting with Taiwan's Bureau of
Foreign Trade (BOFT),and a March 10 meeting with Taiwan's
National Security Council (NSC),AIT delivered ref A demarche
on the need for Taiwan to expeditiously implement its
"gameplan" commitments on export/transit/transshipment
licenses. BOFT discussed some of the technical challenges of
implementation. NSC reaffirmed that the Chen Administration
takes export control issues very seriously, and offered in
separate conversations to both AIT and to BOFT to weigh in
with any recalcitrant agencies. BOFT has reserved seats for
20-30 U.S. companies at an export control seminar on March

21. In a separate meeting with a U.S.-invested chemical
company, AIT heard complaints about the lengthy approval
process for U.S. licenses. Action request para 6. End
summary.

BOFT Concerned About Implementation Details
--------------


2. (S) During the March 9 meeting with BOFT, AIT emphasized
that U.S. agencies were losing patience with the slow pace of
implementation of the licensing aspect of the export control
gameplan. BOFT Export Control Task Force Head Wally Su said
he understood the message. He said BOFT had devoted
considerable time to planning how to implement the
commitments and believed the transit/transshipment licenses
presented the greatest challenge. Su said that BOFT is now
consulting with the Navigation Bureau of the Ministry of
Transportation and Communications on how to identify
sensitive commodity cargoes bound for Iran or North Korea on
ships that transit Taiwan. One possible approach, according
to Su, would be to issue a notice of the license requirement,
and to conduct searches of all ships that call on Iran or
North Korea ports.

Export Control Seminar
--------------


3. (SBU) BOFT has reserved 20-30 seats for representatives
of U.S. companies in Taiwan to attend an export control
seminar in Taipei on March 21 that will focus on a comparison
of Taiwan's and Japan's export control systems. AIT is
coordinating with Amcham to get the word out to U.S.
companies that might be interested.

Taiwan National Security Council
--------------


4. (S) AIT met with Taiwan NSC Senior Advisor Lin Chen-wei
on March 10 in order to make sure the demarche received
high-level political attention. Dr. Lin assured AIT that the
Taiwan government stood by the commitments it had made on
export control and took the need to strengthen its export
control regime very seriously. Later on March 10, Lin called
AIT to inform us that he had spoken with BOFT and offered to
"push" any agencies that were not giving full cooperation.
He reported that BOFT had told him the main problems it faced
were manpower and capacity limits. AIT repeated to NSC the
message that the Taiwan government needed to demonstrate its
commitment to export control with concrete actions.

U.S.-Invested Chemical Company Complains
--------------


5. (C) An American executive working for a U.S.-Taiwan
industrial gas joint venture recently told AIT his company
has given up on requesting re-export licenses for U.S.-made
restricted gases because no commercial deal could wait the
2-3 months it took to get a license approved. As a result of
the long lead times required to re-export, his company only
exported directly from the U.S. to customers in Japan, South
Korea, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan who had predictable needs,
but the company could not export between these locations to
meet immediate needs. He noted that his company could cut

weeks off the delivery time for restricted gases by shipping
from facilities in Canada instead of the United States
because of the shorter time needed to get a Canadian export
license. He also noted that Japanese companies could obtain
export and re-export licenses within a few days and had the
additional advantage of shorter shipping distances to major
markets. (BOFT confirmed to AIT that it knew of cases where
Japan had been able to issue re-export licenses within three
days.)

Residual Gas
--------------


6. (S) In the course of his conversation with AIT, the
American executive noted that the International Maritime
Dangerous Goods Convention allows residual gases of less than
50 kilos in a container to be shipped without a license
because of the environmental and safety risks of trying to
clean the residue from the container. Action request: AIT
would like Washington guidance on whether the thresholds used
in international conventions will apply to the items on
Taiwan's expanded sensitive commodities list.
KEEGAN