By Charles Snyder
STAFF REPORTER IN WASHINGTON
A senior Taiwan policy official from the mainland completed three days of talks in Washington Friday exuding confidence that Sino-US relations have improved markedly over the past year, but breaking no new ground in cross-Strait relations.
Zhou Mingwei, the deputy minister of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council in Beijing, capped his visit with an unexpected meeting at the office of Vice President Dick Cheney Friday evening after having met with senior State Department and National Security Council officials over the past two days.
While the question of President Chen Shui-bian's decision to add the word, Taiwan, to the cover of Taiwan passports did not figure much in his talks with US officials, Zhou slammed the proposal during a press conference toward the end of his visit.
"Some people in the DPP have hollowed out the 'three noes,' what the administration had promised," he said, referring to the pledges Chen made in his inaugural
address not to seek independence or similar policies.
Zhou called the passport action "a challenge to the one-China principle, "is harmful for the fundamental interests of the people on both sides," and harms the stability of cross-Strait relations "that both the United States and China are concerned about."
Zhou called his Washington trip "extremely useful" and said he was "very well received."
While the main focus appeared to be overall US-China relations, Taiwan clearly took up a fair amount of time. The visit, planned before President Bush's decision
to go to China next month, took on added significance as a result of the trip, announced just two days before Zhou
set off for America.
Zhou refused to comment on reports that Jiang Zemin will visit Washington later this year. But he did alert reporters to "an important statement" on cross-Strait relations that Deputy Foreign Minister Qian Qichen will be making in Beijing on Monday, the seventh anniversary of
President Jiang Zemin's 1995 speech in which he set out his "eight points" toward Taiwan
reunification. he gave no indication what the speech would contain.
In connection with that planned statement, Zhou also took note of a speech Qian made on September 10, one day before the Muslim terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. In that statement, which was largely overlooked in the shadow of the
terrorist attacks, Qian said that China would not set any deadlines on talks if Taiwan accepted the
one-China principle. That "is a very strong and clear message," he said.
He also made a pitch to get more Democratic Progressive Party members to visit China, even DPP "fundamentalists" to "have a look at what the mainland looks like." But he said that China would not welcome DPP legislators if they came in their official capacity.
Zhou's visit comes at a time of surprisingly good relations between Washington and Beijing. Several irritants which dogged earlier visits are no longer present. These include the annual spring decision on arms sales to Taiwan, the US-sponsored anti-China resolution at the
UN Human Rights Commission Geneva meeting in April, and the question of annual renewal of US favorable trade ties with China, now that China is in the World Trade
Organization.
At the same time, China is facing an extremely difficult year, and seeks desperately to
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