President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday reaffirmed his earlier statement that relations between Taiwan and China are not state-to-state, but rather “region-to-region.”
“The relationship between Taiwan and Mainland China is not a state-to-state relationship,” Ma told a forum on constitutional interpretation held in Taipei yesterday.
“Within the framework of our Constitution, I would define the Mainland as ‘Mainland region’ and Taiwan as ‘Taiwan region’ — this is what the Act Governing Relations between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area [台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例] is all about,” he said.
PHOTO: CNA
Article 1 of the Act states that it was created to provide a legal basis for exchanges between the Taiwanese and the Chinese “before the unification of the country.”
The statute further defines “Taiwan area” as “Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, as well as all other regions under the rule of the government” and “Mainland area” as “territories of the Republic of China [ROC] outside the Taiwan area.”
Ma said another reason why he would not define the Taiwan-China relationship as state-to-state was because “according to our Constitution, we cannot recognize that there is another country on the mainland, which is part of the ROC.”
Ma said that his definition did not downgrade Taiwan’s sovereignty, as it was based completely on the Constitution and the statute.
“This view is apparently acceptable to everyone, since neither former president Lee Teng-hui [李登輝] nor the former Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] has tried to change the statute,” he said.
Yesterday was not the first time Ma has made such comments. In an interview with the Mexican newspaper El Sol de Mexico in September, Ma made a similar statement, drawing sharp criticism.
Ma’s comments marked a complete change from the path taken by both Lee and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). When he was in office, Lee said the relationship between Taiwan and China was a “special state-to-state” relationship, while Chen simply said it was “state-to-state.”
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) immediately lauded Ma’s definition of cross-strait relations as “logically accurate, legally appropriate” and a “clear interpretation of political reality.”
“This is exactly what the core spirit of the ROC Constitution is,” Wu said.
However, DPP Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) criticized Ma’s remark as “just the opposite to the political reality.”
“How is the mainland part of the ROC’s territory? How is the People’s Republic of China [PRC] not a country?” Huang asked. “This is total nonsense.”
He rebutted Ma’s claim that the DPP clearly approved of the statute because it had not attempted to revise it when it was in power.
“We couldn’t really change the law because we were a minority in the legislature — but that doesn’t mean we accept it,” Huang said. “In fact, we tried everything we could in our administrative power to strengthen Taiwan’s sovereignty.”
Chow Mei-li (周美里), spokeswoman of the Taiwan Solidarity Union, also disagreed with Ma.
“The ROC recognized the PRC as soon as former president Lee abolished the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion [動員戡亂時期臨時條款] and put an end to the Chinese Civil War,” Chow said in a telephone interview.
“What Ma said today would not only be rejected by China, but also unacceptable to all Taiwanese,” Chow said. “I’d like to remind him not to forget that he was elected by the people.”
A Chinese military drone was spotted conducting reconnaissance off Taitung County as President William Lai (賴清德) visited Pingtung County this morning to inspect a drill of the armed forces’ precision-strike capabilities, prompting the military to closely monitor its actions. Today was the final day of a three-day military exercise at Jioupeng Base (九鵬基地) to test the joint combat capabilities of the armed forces and coast guard. The exercise began on Wednesday simulating air defense interception and yesterday tested long-range strike capabilities and new air defense weapons. This morning, the military conducted a final exercise involving air defense, anti-ship and drone operations. Military sources said
OCT. 31: The antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Eraflu have been distributed to about 4,000 medical facilities nationwide for people in seven groups who develop flu-like symptoms As the domestic influenza epidemic enters its peak season and continues to escalate, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday announced that publicly funded influenza antiviral drugs for seven eligible groups have been extended to Oct. 31, allowing those who develop flu-like symptoms to receive the medication without undergoing a rapid influenza test. The CDC has extended the expanded use of flu antiviral drugs to seven groups: healthcare and influenza-prevention personnel; residents and staff at nursing homes, long-term care facilities and similar institutions; kindergarten and daycare workers and home-based caregivers; students from kindergarten through high school, vocational high school and the
RARE PEEK: The footage released showed one of the bears staying in a cave for as long as 70 days, providing the first record of Formosan black bear’s overwintering The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released tracking records of released Formosan black bears for the first time, showing that they get much closer to human settlements than previously thought. The agency said it had captured two bears, Da Qu-ali (達古阿里) and Aziman (阿里曼), in indigenous villages in Hualien County and began to track them with a camera-mounted satellite collar after releasing them back into the wild. The results confirmed that the bears have moved from deep mountain areas into lowland hills closer to human communities, leading to an increase in human-bear conflicts, it said. The agency has introduced artificial intelligence-assisted early
Taiwanese Tsai Chin-shu (蔡金樹), who had been imprisoned in China for engaging in activity that “endangers national security,” said on Facebook on Friday that he has returned to Taiwan. Tsai, chairman of the Southern Taiwan Union of Cross-strait Relations Associations, had traveled frequently between Taiwan and China for years, and at one time ran a trading company in China’s Pingtan. In July 2018, he traveled to Quanzhou, Fujian Province, to attend a cross-strait food trade fair and stayed at a hotel in Xiamen. He checked out the following day and then disappeared. His family had made repeated appeals to the authorities
RSS