An article by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) on the recently concluded cross-strait leaders’ summit published yesterday through China’s state-run Xinhua news agency featured “extra” wording that said the so-called “1992 consensus” clearly states that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait are of one country’s domestic relations” (一個國家內部的關係).
Zhang used different phrasing at a news conference he held after the meeting between President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Singapore on Saturday.
At Saturday’s news conference, Zhang quoted what Xi had said during a closed-door meeting with Ma. At the time, Zhang said that both Xi and Ma view the “1992 consensus” as the main reason for improved cross-strait relations over the past seven years, quoting Xi as saying: “The importance of the ‘1992 consensus’ is that it reflects the ‘one China’ principle and clearly states that cross-strait relations are not ‘state-to-state’ relations, nor ‘one China, one Taiwan.’”
However, “the ‘1992 consensus’ also states that both sides of the Strait are of one country’s domestic relations” was added to the Xinhua article, titled “A historic handshake transcends 66 years — Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun talks about the first-ever meeting held between leaders from both sides of the Strait,” which was published yesterday at 12:25am.
In the article, Zhang also issued a rebuttal, saying that some people have distorted the “1992 consensus” into an agreement between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party.
“The ‘1992 consensus’ was authorized and approved by relevant authorities from both sides of the Strait and has received wide support from people on both sides of the Strait,” Zhang said in the article, another statement that he did not make during the news conference on Saturday.
The article is not the first example of China slipping in extra words in an article published by Xinhua.
In its reports on the meeting between Xi and US President Barack Obama in September, Xinhua said: “The US is opposed to Taiwanese, Tibetan and Xinjiang independence.”
US media outlets did not report on the discrepancy.
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