Machine tools are an important Taiwanese export to mainland China. Though exports of this "early harvest list" item have risen 62%, the industry hopes that negotiations on the second "early harvest list" will yield still more fruit. The photo shows the Tongtai Machine & Tools precision machine tool production line. (courtesy of Tongtai)

The Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) "normalizing" economic exchanges between Taiwan and mainland China was signed last June and took effect on January 1 of this year. The agreement included a so-called "Early Harvest List" that enumerates which products get early tariff reductions. After much negotiation, some 539 Taiwanese exports eventually ended up on that list. Six months on, what "harvests" have been reaped? What are the positives and negatives for each of the industries involved?

According to the Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), Taiwanese exports to mainland China for the first half of 2011 amounted to US$61.5 billion, US$10.1 billion of which was in "early harvest" products. Early harvest exports to the mainland were up 13.3% from the same period last year, three percentage points higher than the 10.5% first-half growth rate of all Taiwanese exports to the mainland.

Meanwhile, Taiwan's imports from the mainland rose to US$21.9 billion, US$2.5 billion of which were early harvest products from the mainland. These early harvest imports were up 44.8% from the same period last year, 10 percentage points higher than the 34.2% growth rate for all imports from the mainland. Cleary, Taiwan and the mainland are trading more as a result of the early harvest provisions of ECFA.