President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said that Taiwan and China can find ways to achieve peace and mutual prosperity, stressing the significance of the so-called “1992 consensus” in the development of cross-strait ties.
Ma told a delegation from the Malaysia-Taiwan trade association that he believes that both sides of the Taiwan Strait will find ways to make peace and deliver mutual prosperity, and that “we have been working toward that direction based on the 1992 consensus.”
That was why Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) reaffirmed the principle of the “1992 consensus” during his recent trip to China and meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), Ma said.
The development of cross-strait ties hinges upon the “1992 consensus,” Ma said.
“I believe that if cross-strait ties remain stable, it will benefit Taiwan, China and the whole region,” he said.
The “1992 consensus” refers to a supposed tacit understanding between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party that Taiwan and China acknowledge there is “one China, with each side having its own interpretation of what that means.”
Former KMT lawmaker Su Chi (蘇起) said that he made up the term in 2000 when he was head of the Mainland Affairs Council.
Ma said that the content of the “1992 consensus” from Taiwan’s perspective was decided by then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) during a meeting of National Unification Council (NUC) in August 1992 that Lee presided over.
At that time, the issue of “one China” was the most contentious between Taiwan and China, and that Taiwan needed to have a clear position on the matte, Ma said.
Ma said he attended the meeting as an NUC researcher, and the idea of the “1992 consensus” received support from the NUC members.
With the two sides failing to reach an agreement on the interpretation of “one China” in a meeting in Hong Kong in October 1992, the Straits Exchange Foundation proposed on Nov. 3 that year that Taiwan and China “verbally state” their respective interpretation of the “one China” principle, presidential spokesman Charles Chen (陳以信) said.
China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits on Nov. 16, 1992 said in a fax that it was willing to “respect and accept” the foundation’s proposal, Chen said.
Ma told his visitors that “the 1992 consensus was proposed by us and China accepted it,” and it has played a key part in stabilizing relations.
However, Lee on Saturday last week said that the “1992 consensus” was “nonsense.”
Lee said there was no such consensus and that Ma’s claim that it was the most significant consensus made across the Strait was “simply talking nonsense.”
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