As the Standing Committee of China's parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), entered its second day of a review an anti-secession bill yesterday, media reports quoted unnamed committee members as saying that the proposed law does not include a timetable for unification with Taiwan.
Despite Beijing's efforts to keep the contents of the bill strictly secret, sources in Hong Kong said that the bill emphases the importance of "peaceful unification."
"The bill does not mention anything about war, nor does it contain a timetable for China's unification with Taiwan," the sources told the Central News Agency.
The Standing Committee of the NPC held group discussions on the bill yesterday. Although the bill does not mention war, it stipulates that China would resort to "non-peaceful approaches" to deal with Taiwan under "necessary situations," a Hong Kong member of the committee told the agency.
Targets
The law targets "any forces or activities aiming at splitting the motherland of China" and is applicable also to Xinjiang and Tibet. The bill, however, will not be applied to Hong Kong and Macau, the sources said.
The Mainland Affairs Council, which has been observing development of the bill, did not comment on the issue yesterday.
"If the bill is passed, it will possibly define conditions in which war could be waged in the Taiwan Strait. This will put Taiwan on a very disadvantageous position," said Lai I-chung (賴怡忠), director of foreign policy studies at the Taiwan Thinktank.
"Taipei may be told not to cross `red lines' set in the bill in order to avoid war. In that case, Taiwan may need to consider drawing its own red lines in interpreting its status quo," Lai said.
The academic added that the anti-secession law could become a counterforce against the US' Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which requires the US to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons and to maintain the US' capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic systems of Taiwan.
"For China, stifling independence activities in Taiwan is more urgent than achieving unification now," said Lin Wen-cheng (
The anti-secession law is more passive than the unification law, which Beijing said it was considering establishing after the March presidential election. The unification law proposal was shelved after China mentioned it in May, Lin said.
US Reaction
"The anti-secession law is less likely to cause a strong reaction by the US," Lin said.
If the anti-secession law clears the Standing Committee, it will be handed to the NPC in the spring of next year for approval. The bill could be enacted in March at the earliest.
"From now to March, internal developments in China and cross-strait interactions would influence the law-making process and contents of the bill ? Taiwan should come up with plans to draw international attention to the law," said Chang Wu-yen (
The scholar urged the people of Taiwan to express appropriate concern about the law.
"At this turning point of cross-strait relations, political parties need to put their ideologies behind them in order to reach consensus [on how to respond to the law]," Chang said.
Beijing could eventually see a full amphibious invasion of Taiwan as the only "prudent" way to bring about unification, the US Department of Defense said in a newly released annual report to Congress. The Pentagon's "Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2025," was in many ways similar to last year’s report but reorganized the analysis of the options China has to take over Taiwan. Generally, according to the report, Chinese leaders view the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) capabilities for a Taiwan campaign as improving, but they remain uncertain about its readiness to successfully seize
Taiwan is getting a day off on Christmas for the first time in 25 years. The change comes after opposition parties passed a law earlier this year to add or restore five public holidays, including Constitution Day, which falls on today, Dec. 25. The day marks the 1947 adoption of the constitution of the Republic of China, as the government in Taipei is formally known. Back then the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governed China from Nanjing. When the KMT, now an opposition party in Taiwan, passed the legislation on holidays, it said that they would help “commemorate the history of national development.” That
Trips for more than 100,000 international and domestic air travelers could be disrupted as China launches a military exercise around Taiwan today, Taiwan’s Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) said yesterday. The exercise could affect nearly 900 flights scheduled to enter the Taipei Flight Information Region (FIR) during the exercise window, it added. A notice issued by the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration showed there would be seven temporary zones around the Taiwan Strait which would be used for live-fire exercises, lasting from 8am to 6pm today. All aircraft are prohibited from entering during exercise, it says. Taipei FIR has 14 international air routes and
Snow fell on Yushan (Jade Mountain, 玉山) yesterday morning as a continental cold air mass sent temperatures below freezing on Taiwan’s tallest peak, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Snowflakes were seen on Yushan’s north peak from 6:28am to 6:38am, but they did not fully cover the ground and no accumulation was recorded, the CWA said. As of 7:42am, the lowest temperature recorded across Taiwan was minus-5.5°C at Yushan’s Fengkou observatory and minus-4.7°C at the Yushan observatory, CWA data showed. On Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County, a low of 1.3°C was recorded at 6:39pm, when ice pellets fell at Songsyue Lodge (松雪樓), a
RSS