Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) yesterday reiterated the “common-senseness” of the so-called “1992 consensus” when asked about a US academic’s expectation that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) would demand that the US endorse the “one China” policy.
In Kaohsiung, Hung re-emphasized the importance of the “1992 consensus,” a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) admitted making up in 2000 that says that both sides of the Taiwan Strait recognize that there is “one China,” but have different interpretations of what “China” means.
“It is a fact that need not be challenged,” Hung said. “I do not understand why a person who wants to be president would want to avoid [the issue] and be reluctant to acknowledge common sense.”
Hung was responding to reporters’ questions about what the Chinese-language United Daily News — followed by other media outlets — reported as “a US academic calling on Taiwan’s next president to accept the ‘1992 consensus.’”
The United Daily News headlined the piece reporting on the views expressed by Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at a Washington conference as: “US think tank academic: The next Taiwan president would have to accept ‘1992 consensus.’”
Despite the headline, what Glaser said was actually speculation about what she expects Xi to say when he meets US President Barack Obama during a visit to the US later this month.
“I would guess that Xi’s message will be that the US should play a more proactive role to ensure that cross-strait stability exists, and that in order to have cross-strait stability, there must be an acceptance by Taiwan’s next president of the ’92 consensus and ‘one China,’ and that the US should play a role in ensuring that happens,” Glaser said at the conference.
The Democratic Progressive Party sent a transcript of Glaser’s report to the media in a bid to clarify the apparently misleading headline.
Regarding China’s three-day, live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait that started yesterday, Hung said on Thursday that there is no need for Taiwan to “over-interpret” China’s military moves, as they are doing it somewhere “far from Taiwan” as part of “routine military exercises,” just as Taiwan had held drills earlier in the week.
She yesterday repeated her call for a relaxed attitude toward the Chinese drill, saying there is no need to over-interpret it as intimidation of Taiwan, but adding that many moves by the other side of the Taiwan Strait “would erode mutual trust,” adding that is why she upholds the “1992 consensus” and the space it creates for interaction.
However, when the “1992 consensus” reaches a bottleneck, “a cross-strait peace agreement, an agreement on military mutual trust and a discussion on Taiwan’s international participation should be seriously considered to ensure eternal cross-strait peace,” Hung said.
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