The government seriously doubts whether a visit by China's top Taiwan affairs policymaker, Chen Yunlin's (陳雲林), will benefit Taiwan-China relations, therefore it is maintaining a cautious attitude while reviewing his application to attend a party-to-party conference held by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) next month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday.
David Huang (黃偉峰), vice chairman of the MAC, said, "since Chen is intentionally avoiding meeting with any government departments, we can't see that the trip will have any positive impact on cross-strait relations."
Huang said that Chen should come to Taiwan with the intention of improving cross-strait relations rather than to represent China's "united front" tactic aimed at degrading Taiwan's status by shunning government officials of Taiwan.
According to the MAC, Chen's request to visit Taiwan, together with those of another 60 Chinese officials, which were proposed by the KMT-affiliated National Policy Foundation, are being dealt with by related government departments.
Chen filed his application in the name of his position in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is director of the Taiwan Work Office of the CPC Central Committee. He didn't use his official title, director of China's State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO).
"Whatever title Chen uses in his application, he is a very high-ranking official in China. And thus his visit to Taiwan should not be confined to merely party-to-party interaction," Huang told the press conference yesterday.
MAC considers Chen's visit to Taiwan as an action of great political significance, with Huang saying that the government will take Taiwanese people's recent bad feelings towards China into consideration when reviewing his request.
Huang said that the bad feeling has been caused by China's interference with Taiwan's APEC envoy and the buying off of Senegal, which resulted in that country's severing of diplomatic ties with Taiwan on Oct. 25.
While casting doubt on Chen's intentions, Huang still urged the Chinese government to start negotiations with Taiwan as soon as possible on arranging the details of Chen's visit.
Although there is no existing legal basis for the government to demand negotiations with Chinese officials who apply to visit Taiwan, Huang said that Chen's application is a special case.
"Official level negotiations are a necessary procedure in arranging Chen's visit ... If China has difficulty in sending TAO officials to Taiwan, we would like to go there [China.] Or the negotiations could be conducted via the Straits Exchange Foundation [SEF] and China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait [ARATS]," Huang said.
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