TAIPEI - A FORMER Taiwanese agriculture minister has taken a consulting job in China, and the opposition charged Monday that he might be helping the mainland obtain valuable seed strains and techniques at the expense of local farmers.

The main opposition party expressed the concerns after Taiwan's Liberty Times reported that Sun Ming-hsien, 72, was advising China on managing several large plantations established recently to attract Taiwanese investment.

Mr Sun retired in 1996, after serving the ruling Nationalist Party government of the day. He now heads the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center, an institute that has received Taiwanese government funding in culturing seeds.

'The government should launch an investigation on how many retired officials have taken up mainland jobs that could result in a conflict of interest,' said Cheng Wen-tsan, spokesman of the Democratic Progressive Party.

The two sides split amid civil war in 1949, and China still claims Taiwan as part of its territory, to be unified by persuasion if possible, force if necessary. The DPP, which lost power last year, favors formal independence and has adopted a vigilant stance on trying to prevent the transfer of relatively advanced Taiwanese technologies to the mainland.

Mr Sun confirmed he recently took up the consulting job at four new plantations on the mainland for Taiwanese investors.

But he told reporters that most farm techniques being developed were in the public domain and that Taiwanese could benefit from the investment by acquiring cheap land.

Still, many Taiwanese investors have complained their Chinese partners have duplicated their seed strains - from orchids, rice, beans to tropical fruits - without paying them royalties.

With the mainland's cheap labor, Taiwan promotes agricultural exchanges at the risk of draining Taiwanese capital, manpower, and techniques to the mainland, said Wu Ming-min, an agriculture professor at Taiwan's National Chunghsing University. -- AP