President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wants to change the common practice in Taiwan of calling the other side of the Taiwan Strait “China” in favor of the term “the mainland,” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said yesterday.
Hsieh, the secretary-general of the KMT caucus, said Ma made the suggestion at a tea party with leading government and legislative officials yesterday.
Hsieh quoted Ma as saying that under the principle of “one China, with each side having its own interpretation” — the so-called “1992 consensus” which the KMT believes was reached during cross-strait talks in Hong Kong in 1992 — Taiwan should not refer to China by its name, but should instead call it “the mainland” or simply “the other side.”
The KMT defines the “1992 consensus” as an agreement according to which it interprets “one China” as the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, while Beijing defines it as the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The ROC was founded in 1912 in China, but relocated to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese Civil War to the Chinese communists.
The practice in Taiwan of calling the other side of the Strait “China” was started during the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) eight years in power from 2000 to 2008, as part of a policy to emphasize Taiwan’s existence as separate from that of China.
According to Hsieh, Ma asked government officials yesterday to be more cautious when referring to China, either verbally or in written documents.
The DPP says the “1992 consensus” does not exist.
In 2006, then-KMT legislator Su Chi (蘇起) admitted he made up the term in 2000, when he was head of the Mainland Affairs Council, before the KMT handed over power to the DPP. Su said he coined the term to encourage both sides to keep up cross-strait exchanges.
At the closed-door spring tea party at the National Defense University, Ma also urged officials to be “on alert at all times” and to place wealth distribution high on their policy agenda.
Ma addressed a wide range of issues, among them economics, flood control, cross-strait development and public communication.
The government’s task in the coming year is not only to maintain the economic recovery, which was felt by the public last year, but also improve the distribution of wealth, the president said.
The development of cross-strait relations since his inauguration, including 15 agreements signed between Taiwan and China, has been rapid “because the stagnancy of bilateral relations during the previous administration jeopardized the interests of the people of Taiwan,” Ma was quoted as saying.
China’s Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong has asked foreign consulates in Hong Kong to submit details of their local staff, which is more proof that the “one country, two systems” model no longer exists, a Taiwanese academic said. The office sent letters dated Monday last week to consulates in the territory, giving them one month to submit the information it requires. The move followed Beijing’s attempt to obtain floor plans for all properties used by foreign missions in Hong Kong last year, which raised concerns among diplomats that the information could be used for
‘ABNORMITY’: News of the military exercises on the coast of the Chinese province facing Taiwan were made public by the Ministry of National Defense on Thursday Taiwan’s military yesterday said it has detected the Chinese military initiating a round of exercises at a bay area in coastal Fujian Province, which faces Taiwan, since early yesterday morning and it has been closely monitoring the drills. The exercises being conducted at Fujian’s Dacheng Bay featured an undisclosed number of People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) warplanes, warships and ground troops, the Ministry of National Defense said in a press statement. The ministry did not disclose what kind of military exercises are being conducted there and for how long they would be happening, but it did say that it has been closely watching
Vice President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said that Beijing was trying to “annex” Taiwan, while China said its recent series of drills near Taiwan are aimed at combating the “arrogance” of separatist forces. The Ministry of National Defense earlier this month said that it had observed dozens of Chinese fighters, drones, bombers and other aircraft, as well as warships and the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong, operating nearby. The increased frequency of China’s military activities has raised the risk of events “getting out of hand” and sparking an accidental clash, Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) said last week. Asked about the spurt
Noting that researchers have found that 85 China-based blogs and accounts were spreading a conspiracy theory that a US “meteorological weapon” had caused recent fires in Hawaii, political observers in Taiwan said the nation also needs to be vigilant of Beijing employing similar disinformation campaigns against Taiwan. The untrue content concerning Hawaii was written in 15 languages and disseminated across a myriad of platforms including Facebook, YouTube and X, a report published in Gizmodo said, citing NewsGuard, an online news content ranker. The effort represented the most expansive Chinese informational operation to be uncovered by NewsGuard to date, Gizmodo said. The conspiracy theory
RSS