Why China went easy on Taiwan’s economy

The trade bans that China imposed on Taiwan in retaliation for Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit there, which included citrus fruit, were not especially painful.

Written by Mike Ives and Zixu Wang

In retaliation for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last week, China conducted large-scale military exercises around the self-governing island democracy and suspended some trade between the sides.

The exercises led to a few shipping disruptions, but they did not affect traffic at Taiwanese or Chinese ports, analysts say. And the trade bans were notable mainly for what they did not target: Taiwan’s increasingly powerful semiconductor industry, a crucial supplier to Chinese manufacturers.

The bans that Beijing did impose — on exports of its natural sand to Taiwan and on imports of all Taiwanese citrus fruits and two types of fish — were hardly an existential threat to the island off its southern coast that it claims as Chinese territory.

“China’s ban on citrus didn’t really affect us,” said Syu Man, a manager for a fruit exporter in southern Taiwan that ships a type of pomelo across East Asia, primarily to Japan. “We don’t depend on the Chinese market.”

https://indianexpress.com/article/world/why-china-went-easy-taiwan-economy-8087955/

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