Two senior Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials yesterday rebuffed the president's suggestion that former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) invite Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) to say whether he endorses the KMT's definition of the so-called "1992 consensus."
Ting Yuan-chao (丁遠超), the director of Lien's office, and Chang Jung-kung (張榮恭), director of the KMT's Chinese Affairs Department, lashed out at President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in response to his meeting with KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Monday.
Ma had urged Chen to recognize the "1992 consensus", according to which Taiwan and China agree that there is "one China," but disagree on what that means.
Chen responded that he would accept this principle if Hu does so as well. He challenged Lien, who is set to visit China next week, to ask Hu to make his position clear.
"Our interpretation of `one China' is the Republic of China, while the mainland [sic] defines it as the People's Republic of China. Lien would never go ask Hu for his interpretation," Ting said.
Lien, who is scheduled to participate in a forum between the KMT and the Chinese government next Friday, will never be a messenger for Chen, Chang said at KMT headquarters.
"President Chen dismissed the `one China' concept and declared his pro-independence stance during his meeting with Chairman Ma. The suggestion that Lien act as messenger was clearly made without sincerity," Chang said.
During their meeting last year, Lien and Hu agreed on a vision for cross-strait peace and development based on the principles of the 1992 consensus and "one China", with each side having its own interpretation, Chang said.
It would be meaningless to ask for any explanation from Beijing, especially as Chen doesn't believe in the 1992 consensus or the "one China" concept, Chang said.
Meanwhile, the People First Party (PFP) caucus urged the government to accept the principle of "one China, with each side having its own interpretation" as the basis for cross-strait talks, saying that Hu supports this approach.
PFP legislative caucus whip Lee Hung-chun (
"The first point of the communique said that cross-strait negotiations should be resumed on the basis of the 1992 consensus, followed by the Straits Exchange Foundation's expression of the 1992 consensus and a different expression made by [China's] Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Strait," Lee said.
In related news, Premier Su Tseng-chang (
"We are the Republic of China. They are the People's Republic of China. I think that's great, and it's also a fact," Su said in response to a KMT lawmaker's question.
DPP caucus whip Yeh Yi-ching (葉宜津) said that Ma's insistence on the "1992 consensus" and "one China, with each side having its own interpretation" was no more than wishful thinking, since China would never accept these ideas.
Additional reporting by Jimmy Chuang and Jewel Huang
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift