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MAC pans `Anti-Secession' Law

China's enactment of the "Anti-Secession" Law two years ago has exacerbated the political and military standoff between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait and poses a tremendous obstacle to the development of cross-strait relations, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday.

The council made the comments in a press statement issued ahead of the upcoming second anniversary of Beijing's passage of the controversial legislation.

Since the enactment of the law, which mandates the use of force against Taiwan if it seeks formal independence, the MAC statement said that China has greatly increased its military budget and accelerated its military buildup against Taiwan.

In the past few years, the statement said, China has deployed more than 1,000 ballistic missiles targeting Taiwan to intensify its military intimidation of the nation.

Besides reinforcing its combat preparedness against Taiwan, the statement said, China has also continued increasing its annual military spending at a double-digit rate in an obvious attempt to achieve global dominance and hegemony, posing a grave threat to regional security and stability.

`one china'

As the law defines cross-strait relations based on China's cherished concept that "there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China," China has never hesitated to use its political, diplomatic and economic clout to even more grossly and blatantly work to suppress Taiwan in the international community since the passage of the legislation, the statement said.

While stubbornly ignoring the Taiwan people's aspiration for normalization of their national development, China has wrongly interpreted all of Taiwan's steps to deepen its democratic system, such as its constitutional re-engineering and name-rectification drives, as actions to promote de jure independence and has mercilessly smeared Taiwan in the global arena, the statement said, adding that its criticism of Taiwan has become even more emphatic and scathing in recent months.

Since the passage of the "Anti-Secession" Law, the statement continued, China has also stepped up its carrot-and-stick strategy toward Taiwan.

While granting favors to specific groups in Taiwan to realize its political objectives, China has continued to avoid contact with Taiwan's popularly elected government and head of state, impeding progress toward the goal of normalizing cross-strait ties, the statement said.

complementary

Worse still, the statement said, China has continued to work on complementary legal bills since the enactment of the "Anti-Secession" Law to facilitate its future military action against Taiwan. The National People's Congress -- China's rubber-stamp parliament -- has passed the first reading of a bill on the declaration of state of emergency, which is scheduled to be enacted by the end of this year. China also plans to screen a draft national defense mobilization bill later this year.

Noting that all of these legislative moves were part of China's pre-emptive efforts to incorporate Taiwan into the application of its emergency decree, the statement said the "Anti-Secession" Law heralded a series of "evil laws" against Taiwan.

Referring to Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing's (李肇星) recent bellicose remarks that "the `Anti-Secession' Law is not something to be shelved to gather dust," the MAC statement said Li's rhetoric expressly reflected the irrationality of China's policy toward Taiwan and its leaders' lack of democratic thinking.

Despite China's hostility against Taiwan, the statement said the Taiwanese government would maintain its longstanding cross-strait policy that prizes peace and democracy and would continue to endeavor to create opportunities for constructive interaction and to resolve bilateral disputes through dialogue.

The MAC statement also urged the international community to keep a watchful eye on developments in cross-strait relations to ward off the possibility of China using non-peaceful means to achieve unification. The MAC said Taiwan's young democracy and lasting peace in the Asia-Pacific region should be safeguarded.
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