Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has imposed a prior approval requirement on the export of 47 products in response to South Africa’s repeated downgrading and renaming of Taiwan’s representative offices in the country.
These products include integrated circuits (IC), chips, and memory.
The move is seen as a reaction to Beijing’s political pressure, which Taipei believes aims to undermine Taiwan’s international standing.
In its statement, the ministry said South Africa’s actions “posed dangers to the protection of national security and public safety, and have caused or may cause adverse effects on the normal development of Taiwan’s economic and trade activities.”
The MOEA also noted that on July 21, South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) unilaterally changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices.
The offices were renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town,” and have since been referred to not as “a foreign representation in South Africa,” but as “international organizations.”