On the third anniversary of Macau's handover to China, Taiwan yesterday appealed to the Macau government to establish a representative office in Taiwan to provide services to thousands of citizens of the territory who live here and to formally assign a department to handle Taiwan affairs.
"With a view to strengthening relations between Taiwan and Macau, we call on the Macau government to establish a representative office in Taiwan as well as an official mechanism to facilitate communication between the two sides," said Vice Chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chen Ming-tong (
The MAC also released an evaluation report on Taiwan-Macau relations.
Although Taiwan currently has a representative office in Macau, the office complains of being impeded in its efforts to promote exchanges between the two sides because there is no department within the Macau government designated to handle Taiwan affairs.
This is despite the fact, says the report, that Taiwanese have accounted for 70 percent of visitors to the special administrative region of China "in the past several years."
The Macau government also has no representative office in Taiwan although some 20,000 citizens of the region currently live in Taiwan. They are mostly students and laborers.
Chen added that although civil exchanges between Taiwan and Macau remain frequent, official relations are hindered by "the China factor."
"There is still plenty of room for the two sides to develop relations. We would hope that the Macau government could consider adopting a more active attitude to the relationship between the two sides," Chen said.
In addition, the report states that Macau has experienced steady development in the three years since its handover. It also said that China takes advantage of the region's potential to serve as an intermediary between Taiwan and China, which it said is proven by China's establishment in February of a branch of the Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) in Macau.
In contrast to the situation in Hong Kong, where there is widespread concern about the implications of proposed anti-subversion legislation, the report says that residents of Macau have shown little reaction to the territory's efforts to introduce its own version of the legislation, required by the Chinese government.
RSS