Wed, May 12, 2004 page3

• Taiwan-born academic posits new sovereignty theory

  • REUTERS
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  A Taiwan-born Chinese academic who has the ear of China's leaders on policy towards Taiwan has floated a formula he hopes will help the rivals sidestep the thorny issue of sovereignty and thaw a freeze in ties.

  To break the political deadlock between Taiwan and China over Taiwan's sovereignty, Zhou Qing (周青), a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the government's top think tank, first floated the idea of the rivals sharing sovereignty at a five-day seminar in the southeastern Chinese port city of Xiamen that ends on Friday.

  "The sovereignty of Old China shifted to the sovereignty of New China after the Republic of China was forced out of the United Nations in 1971," Zhou said in Beijing last week.

  Old China refers to Chiang Kai-shek's (蔣介石) Republic of China, a government that fled to Taiwan in 1949 when Mao Zedong (毛澤東) set up New China, or the People's Republic of China.

  "Their sovereignties were piled on top of one another and melted together," said Zhou, an expert on Taiwanese literature.

  "There is only one sovereignty. It can be shared but it cannot be carved up," said Zhou.

  The new formulation does not change Beijing's cherished "one China" principle, which dictates that there is only one China, of which Taiwan is an inseparable part. But the nuanced wording seems to accommodate Taiwan's desire to be treated as an equal, rather than a mere province.

  China has become increasingly frustrated with Taiwan since the election four years ago of pro-independence President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his re-election in March has left Beijing more worried than ever that the nation is slipping away.

  Zhou, 83, says he has fought all his life for Taiwan, and is now battling to prevent the Taiwanese president from formally declaring the island independent.

  "It's an ideological, cultural and political struggle against Taiwan independence," Zhou said.

  Zhou resisted Japan's 1895 to 1945 colonial rule of Taiwan in the early 1940s by organizing strikes.

  Frustrated with widespread corruption after the nation reverted to Chinese rule, Zhou, then a newspaper reporter, took part in Taiwan's Feb. 28 1947 uprising that was brutally crushed by Nationalist troops with thousands massacred.

  He fled later that year to China, where he joined the Communist Party and has lived in exile since.

  "We must oppose attempts to sever Taiwan's umbilical cord with China," he said.

  Chen, ended more than five decades of Chinese Nationalist Party rule in Taiwan when he won the 2000 elections.

  Zhou says Chen, who has boasted of one day exporting Taiwan's democracy, should respect his right to visit his place of birth.

  The nation lifted bans on the return of pro-independence exiles, including some who tried to assassinate politicians in the wake of democratic reforms in the 1990s. But Zhou is still denied the right to visit to see friends and relatives.

  "I am disappointed ideology takes precedence over democracy in Taiwan," said Zhou, whose application for compensation for victims of the 1947 uprising has been rejected by Taiwan.
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