Responding to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) statement that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is failing to develop a DPP-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) relationship, the DPP yesterday reiterated its stance that cross-strait ties should be based on a government-to-government relationship.
“Cross-strait relations are cross-strait relations; neither KMT-CCP relations nor DPP-CCP relations could represent all the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” DPP spokesperson Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) said. “For a long time, the KMT has made cross-strait relations something between the KMT and the CCP, something that is within the privileged class, and something that is dealt with secretly. The DPP will not follow it and Taiwanese will not accept it.”
The KMT seems to have more influence on cross-strait issues than the government of Taiwan, and even Chu has admitted that such party-to-party exchanges benefit only a few individuals or corporations, he added.
“We therefore would like to call on Chu to refrain from putting his own or the party’s interests before the public’s interests,” Cheng said. “We would like to remind Chu that, without government authorization, no individual or party may proceed to cross-strait negotiations or sign any agreement. Chu must abide by relevant laws, and act only as he should.”
Before departing for a KMT_CCP forum in China yesterday, Chu on Friday said during a press conference that while KMT-CCP exchanges cannot replace regular cross-strait exchanges, they are very important party-to-party relations.
He said that direct DPP-CCP exchanges could also exist, and asked why they do not.
Chu is to participate in the annual KMT-CCP forum in Shanghai, and is to meet with Chinese President and CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) tomorrow, making him the first sitting KMT chairman to meet with the head of the CCP since 1949.
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