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China's oppression blocking closer ties: premier

China's oppression of Taiwan and its determination to build cross-strait links as a strategy to annex Taiwan are the main reasons negotiations on several fronts have not progressed, Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) told a forum in Taipei yesterday.

"Taiwan is ready to let in Chinese tourists and expand cross-strait charter services and has all supplementary measures for the opening in place, but cross-strait negotiations were unfortunately halted by China," Chang said.

He made the remarks at a forum hosted by the Straits Exchange Foundation to mark the 20th anniversary of the opening of cross-strait interaction.

In 2004, the government proposed around 20 items for negotiation. A year later, it listed cargo and passenger charter flights, as well as the opening of Taiwan to Chinese tourists, high on its agenda for negotiations with Beijing.

Negotiations on tourism and charter flights came to a halt earlier this year following several rounds of talks.

"We have extended olive branches to China, but it insists on its `one-China' policy. Moreover, it is building up strength to oppress Taiwan politically, diplomatically and militarily ... which is the biggest obstacle to cross-strait relations," Chang said.

Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Hung Chi-chang (洪奇昌) said that cross-strait interaction in the form of visits by Taiwanese tourists to China and Taiwanese investment in China had increased steadily over the past 20 years, at the same time posing new threats and challenges.

"We are fully aware that China's eventual goal in conducting exchanges is to annex Taiwan, and that's something it needs to change," Hung said.

During a forum session on political relations with China, Lin Cheng-yi (林正義), a researcher in European and US studies at the Academia Sinica, said China had thrown away two chances to improve relations in the past two decades.

In 1991, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) proposed the Guidelines for National Unification enshrining the principle of `one China,' which became the basis for talks the following year in Hong Kong. This represented an opportunity for Beijing, Lin said, to reach a consensus about the status of Taiwan.

Instead, a dispute erupted over what was said at the talks after the KMT, in 2000, began claiming an agreement had been reached -- the "1992 consensus" -- that both sides of the strait should be permitted to have their own interpretations of "one China."

Beijing had a chance again in 2000, when President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), in a show of goodwill, suggested Taiwan and China should increase economic and cultural ties, create a framework for perpetual peace and work for functional integration in a federation modeled on the EU.

But China remained silent, Lee said.

The forum also discussed future prospects for economic ties across the strait.

Chen Tain-jy (陳添枝), professor of economics at National Taiwan University, said in his paper that Taiwan could suffer from China's fast economic growth if it did not participate in the boom and play a role in China's economic integration with the world.

But Huang Tien-lin (黃天麟), a former national policy advisor to the president, said over-reliance on China was not a panacea for the economy.

"The nation's total investment [in China] is equal to half of its GDP, but its economic growth rate and GDP growth rate lag behind South Korea, whose investment in China is just 2.7 percent of its GDP," Huang said.
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