Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) statement yesterday on the so-called “1992 consensus” has put the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in a hard spot, National Cheng Kung University professor Hung Ching-fu (洪敬富) said.
The “1992 consensus,” a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) admitted to making up in 2000, refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party that there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
The KMT’s consensus was made intentionally vague, but Xi’s statement has removed that vagueness by adding the “goal of unification,” Hung said.
That placed the KMT in an awkward position, and China could, like KMT Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) had in last year’s local elections campaign, begin linking the consensus to the economy, Hung said.
Tamkang University’s Graduate School of China Studies professor Andy Chang (張五岳) agreed, saying that Xi’s statement marked a departure of the Chinese definition of the consensus from that of the KMT.
It has also affected perception of the consensus by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwanese public, Chang said.
China has adopted the method of handling the mention of the consensus on two levels, Chang said.
Should the consensus be mentioned in relation to cross-strait ties, or negotiations between high-ranking civil servants on either side, the Chinese would place more significance on the issue, he said.
However, should the consensus, or its concept, be mentioned in lower-level interactions, such as city-to-city relations, the Chinese would place less significance on the usage of the term or concept, Chang added.
This two-level handling was why Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was able to facilitate interaction with Shanghai when he said “both sides of the [Taiwan] Strait are family,” but would probably meet with failure if he were to use it in running for the presidency, Chang said..
Xi in his concluding remarks said: “It is the global consensus to maintain the one China principle, and the affairs of the Chinese should be decided by the Chinese and not by foreign powers. China’s unification will not harm any nation’s benefits, including their economic benefits in Taiwan.”
Compared with the statements made in 2008, the 30th anniversary of China’s original Letter to “Taiwanese compatriots,” Taiwan and China has no basis of mutual trust, have essentially severed their only link of communication and faces the additional difficulty of the US-China trade dispute, which is straining US-China relations while further solidifying US-Taiwan relations, Chang said.
Chang said that Xi’s comments are aimed partly at the US.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) New Year’s address and “Xi Five Points” are both statements to the international body and are less concerned with whether their statements would receive a positive response from each other, Chang said.
Tsai’s address had made clear the DPP administration’s stance, allowing the Taiwanese public and the international community to understand what lines the government will not cross, Chang said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
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