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Lien `using' China to hold on to power

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) trip to Beijing might be an attempt to prolong his chairmanship, academics said yesterday during a seminar on the implications of Beijing's "Anti-Secession" Law.

"Lien has decided to go to China in disregard of a recent survey which found a large proportion of people object to opposition leaders going to Beijing. This reveals that the purpose of Lien's trip is not to win voters' support, but for something else," said Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), a research fellow at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at Academia Sinica.

He was citing a survey conducted by ETTV released recently. About 38 percent of respondents said they opposed the KMT leader going to China and about 25 percent said they had no opinion.

Hsu said confrontation between the pan-green camp and the pan-blue camp has reached a peak even though elections have come to an end for the moment.

"It is clear that Lien's trip to China is disadvantageous to the KMT's future electoral prospects. But Lien is still going to China," Hsu said.

"Lien's visit to China is obviously part of a campaign to extend his term as KMT chairman, otherwise he wouldn't be expending so much effort negotiating with high-ranking officials in China," he said.

According to KMT spokeswoman Cheng Lee-wen (鄭麗文), Lien will visit China either at the end of this month or early next month.

Lai I-chung (賴怡忠), director of Foreign Policy Studies at Taiwan Thinktank, agreed, saying that if Lien stepped down as KMT chairman after coming back from China, the KMT would be faced with a gap in its succession process, since his would-be successors, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), would have to clarify the KMT's relationship with China.

Hsu also urged Lien and People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) to not compete with each other over the scale of their reception in China, but instead court the support of the Taiwanese people.

Chang Wu-Ueh (張五岳), a professor at Tamkang University's Institute of China Studies, reminded political leaders going to China that certain types of negotiations would break the law.
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