Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) comments that suggested using the longstanding Beijing cross-strait initiative of “one country, two systems (一國兩制)” in dealing with Taiwan violated mainstream public opinion in the nation and will not be accepted as an option in cross-strait relations, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.
In Xi’s meeting with former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) in Beijing on Tuesday, Xi was quoted by state-owned Xinhua news agency as saying that China “respects the social system and lifestyle that Taiwanese compatriots have chosen” and it “completely understands how Taiwan compatriots feel.”
However, “family affection will help heal past wounds” and Beijing has “patience and confidence” that the existing problems would be solved, Xi was quoted as saying in the meeting with Lien, who is scheduled to conclude his four-day visit today.
Photo: CNA
The Chinese president reiterated that “it has never changed, and will never change, that we belong to one nation.”
“Xi was basically again proposing ‘one country, two systems,’ but the majority of Taiwanese do not accept it,” the DPP’s Policy Research Committee executive director Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) told a press conference.
The mainstream public opinion in Taiwan as well as the DPP’s view are clear, as various polls have showed, that people see Taiwan as an independent and sovereign country without subordination, and any change to the “status quo” would require the consent of the 23 million Taiwanese, Wu said.
Wu said that China has not only tried to undermine relations between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the DPP, but also the KMT’s internal relations. For example, Beijing received Lien, a former KMT chairman, with higher-level protocol than it did Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦), who as a representative of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) met with his Chinese counterpart last week in Nanjing for the first governmental meeting between the two sides in 65 years, he said.
“It’s clear that Lien no longer represents Ma. I would say that Beijing is trying to exploit the strained relations between Lien and Ma to its advantage. To me, it did not look like Lien was trying to create an opportunity for a proposed Ma-Xi meeting,” Wu said.
Responding to the issue before the party’s weekly Central Standing Committee meeting, DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said Lien’s view was his own and represented neither the KMT administration’s official position nor the opinion of Taiwanese.
The MAC responded to the Lien-Xi meeting in a press release yesterday, reiterating the Ma administration’s insistence that cross-strait relations would be promoted based on the foundation of “the [so-called] ‘1992 consensus’ and ‘one China with different interpretations (一中各表)’ initiative” and that the “status quo” would be maintained with “no unification, no independence and no use of force.”
The ministry called on Beijing to face reality so that bilateral relations could be further developed with mutual trust.
Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) lambasted Lien for saying that cross-strait relations are not international relations, saying Lien had betrayed the people of Taiwan in exchange for benefits to himself and his family.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
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
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS