President Ma Ying-jeou met on the evening of January 25 with a delegation led by Governor Ikuo Kabashima of Japan's Kumamoto Prefecture. In addition to updating the visitors on the status of bilateral ties, the president also expressed his hope for the continued advancement of friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries.
In remarks, the president first welcomed Governor Kabashima on behalf of the government and people of the ROC, and noted that both he and Governor Kabashima are graduates of Harvard University. The connection between the two in this regard makes the meeting today all the more cordial, he stated.
President Ma remarked that while Taiwan and Japan do not maintain formal diplomatic relations, the two countries have long had an extremely close relationship. He pointed out that four years ago he designated the relationship between Taiwan and Japan a "special partnership." The president said that the government continues to advocate this concept, which has yielded a number of concrete achievements. For instance, the two sides have signed a youth working holiday agreement and Taiwan has opened a representative office in Sapporo, Hokkaido. Furthermore, airlines now fly direct between Taipei's Songshan Airport and Tokyo's Haneda Airport. The two countries have signed an open skies agreement, as well as the Taiwan–Japan Bilateral Investment Arrangement, he added. The Japanese parliament (Diet) in 2011 passed the Law Concerning Promotion of Exhibitions of Art Objects from Overseas, which removes any concerns that art objects of Taiwan's National Palace Museum could potentially be impounded or restricted while on display in Japan, he said. President Ma particularly pointed out that the Taiwan public generously provided donations to Japan after the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in 2011. All of these developments, he said, point to the increasingly close relations between the two sides.
With respect to the development of economic and trade ties between Taiwan and Japan, President Ma stated that Japan is Taiwan's second largest trading partner, while Taiwan is Japan's fourth largest. In the past, the value of Japanese investment in Taiwan outpaced that of Taiwan's investment in Japan, he said. However, since the signing of the Bilateral Investment Arrangement in 2011, Taiwan's investment in Japan has increased, and last year exceeded US$1 billion, which was more than three times the amount of the previous year and a new record high, he pointed out. President Ma also noted that while Japan has the greatest number of investments in Taiwan of any foreign nation, the growth in the amount of investments has been limited.
President Ma furthermore explained that Taiwan and Japan last year signed the Patent Prosecution Highway Memorandum of Understanding, which has helped reduce the time needed to obtain patents from 42 months to just 2.5 months. In addition, the two sides signed an agreement on mutual recognition of electrical and electronic product inspections, which he said is effectively promoting trade and economic interaction.
Commenting on tourism, President Ma noted that Japanese last year made 1.43 million tourist visits to Taiwan, while ROC nationals made 1.56 million tourist visits to Japan. Both of these numbers were record highs, he pointed out, attributing the growth to the impact of the open skies agreement, which has increased the number of cities served by airlines of the two countries by 90% and the number of flights by 45%. Expect for Haneda and Narita airports, restrictions on flights to second-tier airports have been lifted, the president noted. The lifting of limits on the number of flights and types of aircraft that can serve these routes has done much to promote visits by the people of each country to the other, the president said.
In addition to Governor Kabashima, the delegation included Vice President Kazuyo Yoshinaga of the Kumamoto Prefectural Assembly, four prefectural assemblymen (Katsunari Nishioka, Masashi Sato, Saburo Matsuda, and Satoru Kamata), Yutaka Kobayashi (a member of the governor's staff) , Director-General Shinichi Masakai (Department of Commerce, Industry, Tourism and Labour, Kumamoto Prefecture), and Director Shingo Yamauchi (International Affairs Division of the Department of Commerce, Industry, Tourism and Labour, Kumamoto Prefecture). The delegation was accompanied to the Presidential Office by Association of East Asian Relations Chairman Liao Liou-yi (廖了以) to meet President Ma. Also attending the meeting was National Security Council Advisor Lee Chia-chin (李嘉進).