Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday warned about closer ties between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP), saying the two parties were conspiring to sign three agreements via three communication platforms within three years.
Emphasizing that it was a serious matter, Lu said Beijing had changed its tactic from military intimidation to soft and smart power.
“[Beijing] has realized that war will invite international sanctions and be detrimental to its rise in power,” she said. “So it has begun to engage in a plot for peaceful unification.”
With China's “Anti-Secession” Law in place, Lu said the KMT administration and CCP regime were colluding to implement the “3-3-3” plan.
Lu said the two parties planned to sign an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA), build a military confidence-building mechanism and ink a peace treaty before 2011 using as their communication platforms the KMT-CCP forum, the cross-strait forum, and the Straits Exchange Foundation and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait.
Since taking office in May last year, Ma has redefined his “three noes” pledge, Lu said.
No discussion of unification with Beijing during his presidency has become “no exclusion of unification with Beijing,” Lu said, while no pursuit or support of de jure Taiwanese independence has become “no to Taiwanese independence.”
Commenting on the recent visits to China by former DPP legislator Hsu Jung-shu (許榮淑) and former Council of Agriculture minister Fan Chen-tsung (范振宗), Lu said although she thought it was inappropriate to do so, she respected the party's decision to punish them.
Defying a DPP ban, Hsu and Fan participated in the KMT-CCP forum on July 11 at the invitation of the CCP. The DPP Central Standing Committee has passed a proposal to expel Hsu and Fan for attending the forum. The approved motion has been sent to the party's Central Review Committee for a final ruling today, with Fan and Hsu invited to defend themselves.
Lu, who met Hsu on Tuesday, said Hsu thought the party's ban on its members visiting China was not applicable to her because she does not hold any party position.
Besides, the meeting she attended in China was “not that big a deal,” Lu quoted Hsu as saying.
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
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