Former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) pushed for a rebalancing of exchanges between Taiwan and China at a high-profile symposium on cross-strait relations in Hong Kong yesterday.
In his keynote speech, Hsieh said cross-strait interactions have become increasingly narrowed to exchanges between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with potentially serious consequences.
“This could cause undercurrents and trigger backlashes that would lead to an imbalance between the functions of political parties and the conducting of cross-strait exchanges,” he said.
“Cross-strait interactions are not the same as KMT-CCP interactions,” he said at the start of the two-day forum hosted by the Taiwan Reform Foundation — which he chairs — and the Chinese Academy of Social Science’s Taiwan Research Institute.
Hsieh said there are two major stances in Taiwanese mainstream public opinion regarding ties with China: one is the hope for cross-strait peace and commercial exchanges that create mutual prosperity; the other is the desire to maintain self-rule and preserve democratic values.
Whichever party holds power in Taiwan must maintain a balance between those two stances, something he hinted was not happening at present, Hsieh said.
“People in Taiwan today are worried about the model of the KMT and CCP monopolizing exchanges. They are concerned that the ‘status quo’ is being undermined and that democratic mechanisms are being distorted,” said Hsieh, who stressed that he was not representing the DPP at the forum.
Taiwan Research Institute director Yu Keli (余克禮) challenged Hsieh’s contention, saying that China welcomed Taiwanese from all circles to participate in cross-strait exchanges and that it was the DPP which had barred its members from engaging with Beijing in the past.
Yu also questioned the notion that the KMT and CCP were holding negotiations. Yu said that on June 7, 1991, the Chinese government authorized officials in charge of Taiwan affairs to begin talks with the Taiwanese government, and defined them as “cross-strait negotiations,” not “inter-party negotiations.”
On Jan. 31, 1995, then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) proposed that the two sides hold talks on ending cross-strait hostilities under the “one China” principle. Since then, “KMT-CCP negotiations” have been relegated to the dustbin of history, Yu said.
Now, “we expect to have joint discussions with all sectors in Taiwan on the peaceful development of cross-strait relations,” he said.
Yu did not mention the series of high-level meetings held between leaders of the KMT and the CCP since 2005, the most recent of which involved former KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and CCP General-Secretary and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on June 13.
Wu’s use of the “one China” framework to describe cross-strait ties then has met strong criticism.
Environmental groups yesterday filed an appeal with the Executive Yuan, seeking to revoke the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conditionally approved in February for the Hsieh-ho Power Plant’s planned fourth liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coast of Keelung. The appeal was filed jointly by the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and the Keelung City Taiwan Head Cultural Association, which together held a news conference outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei. Explaining the reasons for the appeal, Wang Hsing-chih (王醒之) of the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group said that the EIA failed to address
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
RSS