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Taiwan’s interests come first: Wu

Premier Wu Den-yih explains the government’s cross-strait policies at a seminar in Taipei yesterday. PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES

Taiwan must consolidate relations with other democracies and maintain self-defense capabilities, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said yesterday ahead of another round of cross-strait talks scheduled for December.

Wu said Taiwan could not safeguard its national security and the wellbeing of its people based solely on cross-strait detente.

Advising civil servants on the government’s cross-strait policy, Wu said that its policies hinged on two principles: maintaining the integrity of the sovereignty of the Republic of China and ensuring the interests of Taiwan’s 23 million people.

“While improving our relationships with [China], we must also consolidate ties with the US, Japan, Europe and other freedom-loving countries governed by the rule of law in terms of political, diplomatic and economic relations while shoring up self-defense military strength,” Wu said.

“Putting Taiwan first for the benefit of the people” remains the government’s paramount principle in determining cross-strait policy, Wu said.

“We should not do things that are not beneficial to the public,” he said. “Those who execute cross-strait policies should act as gatekeepers when necessary and step on the brakes where necessary to maintain these principles.”

Wu said the proportion of the country’s exports to China and Hong Kong had risen to 40 percent of its total annual exports, or about US$130 billion per year.

“The trade surplus we have with China last year was higher than the annual government budget ... We need to enhance economic ties with Japan, the US and ASEAN countries,” he said

Wu said the government’s plan to sign an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China remained essential.

“How can we ignore the huge market [of China] and the rising biggest factory in the world?” he said.

The planned formation of free-trade zones consisting of ASEAN plus China and ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea would cause local businesses to lose their competitive edge, which makes the ECFA imperative, Wu said.

In a related development, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said yesterday that the next round of cross-strait talks had been tentatively scheduled to be held in Taichung in December.

The decision was reached when Straits Exchange Foundation ­Secretary-­General Kao Koong-lian (高孔廉) and his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Deputy Chairman Zheng Lizhong (鄭立中), met in Hangzhou in China’s Zhejiang Province on Tuesday.

Kao and Zheng discussed four issues to be addressed during the meeting in Taichung: fishing industry cooperation, quality checks for agricultural products, cross-strait cooperation on the inspection and certification of products and preventing double taxation.

Liu dismissed speculation that Kaohsiung or other places in southern Taiwan had been blacklisted as possible summit venues because of recent events that displeased China, such as the Dalai Lama’s visit to Taiwan and the screening of a documentary about Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer in Kaohsiung.

Since southern Taiwan was hit hard by Typhoon Morakot in August, Taichung was considered a more suitable location for the talks, Liu said.
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