Several groups yesterday panned Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) for saying that inviting the Dalai Lama to visit Taiwan would be the same as inviting him to visit China because Taiwan is part of China.
“Wu Yu-sheng’s remarks show that the Chinese Nationalist Party’s [KMT] insistence on the [so-called] ‘1992 consensus’ is a deception,” Democracy Tautin spokesperson Wu Cheng (吳崢) told a Taipei news press conference sponsored by the Taiwan Association of University Professors.
“If the KMT truly believes in the ‘1992 consensus,’ it would have nothing to worry about in inviting the Dalai Lama to visit the Republic of China [ROC], because the ROC has never banned the Tibetan spiritual leader from visiting, and we do not have to worry about how the People’s Republic of China [PRC] would react,” Wu Cheng said.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Wu Cheng was referring to a consensus allegedly produced during the 1992 cross-strait talks held in Singapore, which says that both sides of the Taiwan Strait believe that there is only one China, with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
In 2006, then-KMT lawmaker Su Chi (蘇起) said that he had simply made up the term in 2000, when he was head of the Mainland Affairs Council.
Although the KMT has said that it is the only political party that can handle cross-strait relations, Wu Yu-sheng’s remarks show that China actually has the final say on cross-strait ties, Wu Cheng said.
“Voters in Taiwan should never vote for a candidate who advocates a ‘one China’ policy,” he said.
Northern Taiwan Society member Christian Fan Jiang (范姜提昂) said it was likely that Wu Yu-sheng’s target audience was in Beijing, not Taiwanese.
“Wu Yu-sheng’s remarks came after Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission Minister Tsai Yu-ling (蔡玉玲) said Taiwan would welcome a visit by the Dalai Lama,” Fan Jiang said. “Tsai’s comment may have upset Beijing, so Wu Yu-sheng had to say something to make up for it.”
“If a visit by the Dalai Lama to Taiwan is the same as a visit by him to China, could we say that the arrival of the People’s Liberation Army would not be a big deal because it would only be coming to China?” Fan Jiang said.
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