Mainland Affairs Council Chair-woman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) sent a seven-page position paper to the legislature last week to refute her predecessor's claim that the government is determined to revise the law governing cross-strait affairs in order to push for independence.
Though Tsai meant the paper to be a private reference both for former council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) and for legislators who are reviewing the proposed amendments to the Statute Governing the Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例), the contents were revealed by a Chinese-language newspaper yesterday.
Through a spokesperson, Tsai said yesterday that "rather than being hostile to Su, I was trying to clarify the government's position, because Su's comments are unfair."
During a speech delivered to the KMT's Central Standing Committee last week, Su criticized the government as stiff and conservative.
He said the proposed amendments to the statute would not lift the ban on direct transportation links with China and some articles would further restrict cross-strait civil exchanges rather than make them easier to arrange.
He said "Biased mainland policy is the killer of Taiwan's economy. The current dilemma for our country could be described as schizophrenia," meaning that the government is trying to create an illusion that it has a moderate attitude toward cross-strait relations while at the same time pushing for independence.
In her paper, Tsai called Su's allegation that the government is pushing for independence and direct transport links as a means to win votes "untrue".
"The government takes its res-ponsibilities to create a stable environment for resuming cross-strait talks. But Chinese authorities are still hostile toward Taiwan, which has made the improvement of cross-strait relations impossible," she wrote in the paper.
She said the government will definitely pursue the opening of direct links. But since the matter involved national security and jurisdiction questions, the problems should be resolved after comprehensive negotiations with China.
Tsai also said the government's policy is little different in this regard from the position of the former KMT administration.
"If the former government had been able to resolve such problems, it would not have left it to the current government," she said.
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