The general direction of the nation’s policies on China will remain unchanged despite the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) losses in last month’s elections, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said yesterday.
Wang told lawmakers that the government would continue pushing for peaceful development of cross-strait ties based on the Constitution and the “1992 consensus.”
However, in response to a question posed by KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), Wang said that the government has been too hasty in pushing some of its policies, implying that unpopular policies were responsible for the KMT’s losses on Nov. 29.
Wang said the government should critically re-evaluate some of its China policies and should communicate with the public and the legislature more on those issues.
He cited in particular widespread concern that the cross-strait service trade agreement — stalled in the legislature since it was signed in June last year — and the planned trade-in-goods pact would only benefit certain interest groups.
He said these agreements would be good for Taiwan’s small and medium businesses, and what the council should do is help the public better understand their benefits.
Wang also spoke about the possibility of a meeting between President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), saying nothing has been planned.
The council has not been working on a Ma-Xi meeting since hopes for one evaporated after it did not occur at the APEC summit in Beijing last month, he added.
Responding to a question by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), Wang said that an appropriate time, occasion and “capacity” were needed for a meeting between the leaders of Taiwan and China.
Before the legislative meeting, Wang, in response to media queries about a possible meeting between Xi and New Taipei Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), who is the sole candidate for next month’s KMT chairmanship elections, said that any such decision would be up to the party.
The KMT says the “1992 consensus” is an understanding that was reached during cross-strait talks in 1992 that there is only one China, which encompasses both Taiwan and China, but each side is free to interpret the meaning of the phrase “one China.”
However, opposition parties and others dispute this and former KMT legislator Su Chi (蘇起) said in February 2006 that he had made up the term in 2000 when he was council chairman.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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