Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Yu Shyi-kun said the government could boycott the Beijing Olympics if China keeps treating it as part of its territory rather than as a separate country.
The DPP will push for the right conditions to send the nation's athletes to Beijing but will not let China use the games as a way to downgrade Taiwan's status, he said.
"The party hopes the country's competitors can participate in the Olympic Games, but China still uses the belittlement of sovereignty to put pressure on Taiwan, defining Taiwan as a local government in China," Yu said. "This is something we have absolutely no way of accepting."
Meanwhile, Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Chen Ming-tong (
Reports quoted Chen as saying that after Taipei rejected the torch relay route, Jiang Xiaoyu (蔣效愚), executive vice president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games, said there was still a year before the start of the relay and both sides could talk about it.
Chen said Taiwan was willing to renegotiate and is now waiting for Beijing to float a new proposal and convey sincerity in wishing to restart the talks.
Chen said that when both sides of the Taiwan Strait discussed the torch relay route early this year, they signed meeting minutes. The Taiwanese delegate brought back the planned route for study and gave written agreement to the plan in March, although the plan at the time did not include Macau.
Chen said Macau is not a member of the International Olympic committee (IOC) and that the route plan turned Taipei into a "domestic leg" of the relay.
Beijing's reference of the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee as "Taipei, China" is also unacceptable, Chen said.
But he also said that "taking part in IOC-sponsored activities is our right as a member of the IOC and we'll surely attend the 2008 Games."
He said that when Beijing bid for the 2008 Olympics, Taipei also cast a "yes" vote, but the torch relay route shows that Taiwan's goodwill gesture has not received a reciprocal response from China.
China's plan announced, on April 26, stipulates that the Olympic torch will travel from Ho Chi Minh City to Taipei and then continue on to Hong Kong, Macau and several other Chinese cities before arriving in Beijing.
Taiwan rejected the route because it felt Beijing had deliberately downgraded its sovereign status.
The government wants the torch to come to Taiwan via a third country and travel on to another country.
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