Former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) yesterday told Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that both Taiwan and China should make sure there would be no changes in the “1992 consensus” and two other principles in pushing ahead with the development of cross-strait relations.
Siew, who is attending the APEC summit as President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) proxy, made the remarks in a meeting with Xi at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on the sidelines of APEC meetings.
Siew said that the insistence on promoting peaceful development of cross-strait ties and systematically forging economic cooperation between Taiwan and China should not be changed.
Photo: CNA
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) believes the so-called “1992 consensus” was reached during a meeting in Hong Kong in 1992 between then-Straits Exchange Foundation chairman Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) and then-chairman of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, Wang Daohan (汪道涵), under which both sides claim to have acknowledged that there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “one China” means.
In 2006, then-KMT legislator Su Chi (蘇起) said that he had made up the term in 2000, when he was Mainland Affairs Council chairman, before the KMT handed over power to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
The DPP and others insist the consensus does not exist.
Xi yesterday said that although both sides have seen some results and advances in the peaceful development of cross-straits ties over the past year or more, they have also encountered some new problems.
Xi, who is also general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, said the two sides should try to maintain long-term and healthy development of ties by “enhancing confidence, increasing mutual trust, respecting each other and interacting positively.”
Yesterday’s meeting was the first high-level cross-strait encounter since Ma voiced support for the “Occupy Central” movement in Hong Kong that began last month, support that has been criticized by Beijing.
The Siew-Xi meeting was also attended by Mainland Affairs Council Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦), who is serving as Siew’s adviser on the trip, and several Taiwanese businesspeople, as well as China State Councilor Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) and Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍).
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