President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) are reverting Taiwan to a single-party state with their ill-conceived proposal that cross-strait relations be conducted under the concept of “one country, two areas (一國兩區),” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers said yesterday.
Mainland Affairs Council Minister Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) and National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Der-sheng (蔡得勝) said in the legislature yesterday that they were not consulted nor briefed on former KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung’s (吳伯雄) trip to Beijing, where Wu made the proposal to Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) on Thursday.
“The controversy reflects a dysfunctional administration, with party officials making major political statements for the government,” DPP Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Ma, who Tuan said had -authorized Wu to make the proposal, also breached his pledge that he would consult the opposition on major national issues.
In response, Lai said Wu did not express a new position on cross-strait relations, since the proposal is in line with the Constitution and the Act Governing Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例).
While Lai said that the rhetoric of “one country, two areas” was an oversimplification of a complex initiative, she added that it did not signal Taiwan was ready to engage in political talks with China.
Tsai said there had been no official response from Beijing and he did not think it would address the proposal any time soon.
“I really don’t think the four-word initiative is that serious, since it was only a proposal,” Tsai said.
While it was “perhaps not a good time for the government to touch upon the sensitive issue,” Tsai said, any non-government initiative and discussion to explore possible solutions should be encouraged, because the development of bilateral relations should continue.
DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) countered that the proposal ignored the Constitution and undermined the longstanding principle of “creative ambiguity” in Taiwan’s dealings with China.
The most dangerous implication in Wu’s remark was not the initiative, but his comment right after the proposal when he said that cross-strait relations were not a state-to-state relationship, but a special relationship, DPP Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said.
“Because that implied the Republic of China is extinct,” Lin said.
DPP Legislator Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) questioned why Ma unilaterally decided to propose the initiative when there was no Chinese pressure.
“In my opinion, the move is not helpful to peaceful development across the [Taiwan] Strait anyway,” Hsu said.
DPP Legislator Pan Men-an (潘孟安) told a press conference earlier that the Act Governing Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area was enacted to deal with people-to-people exchanges and not the issue of Taiwan’s sovereignty.
KMT lawmakers also took shots at the Ma administration, with Chiang Chi-chen (江啟臣) questioning why it made such a proposal when it maintains that it would engage Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” and “one China with different interpretations.”
KMT Legislator Chi Kuo-tung (紀國棟) said the KMT was “looking for trouble” with the proposal, as all sovereignty-related disputes should be set aside for now because the “time is not right.”
Citing the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) dispute as a reference, Chi said it does Taiwan no good to raise the issue with Japan right now.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
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