The Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) should serve Taiwan, not the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), former Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) said yesterday, adding that the foundation’s head was confusing his role and campaigning for the KMT’s presidential candidate in China.
Huang’s comments came in light of a trip by SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤), who also doubles as the KMT’s deputy chairman, to Shanghai on Thursday where he allegedly canvassed for votes for President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election bid among China-based Taiwanese businesspeople.
At a press conference yesterday attended by Victims of Investment in China Association president William Kao (高為邦) and Taiwanese businessman Shen Po-sheng (沈柏勝), who had his assets seized in China in 1992, Huang criticized Beijing’s promise to resolve by the end of this year cases in which Taiwanese businesspeople had claimed that their assets had been illegally appropriated by the end of the year.
Photo: Reutes
The “empty promise” showed that it was a double-handed plan to trick businesspeople, said Huang, who is now chairman of the Taiwan Solidarity Union.
According to Huang, not only were the cases unresolved, but Chiang had visited China several times within the past two months under the auspices of “concern for China-based Taiwanese businesspeople” to openly canvass for votes for Ma.
Chiang, after presiding over the SEF’s end-of-year press conference in Taipei on Thursday, flew to China to canvass for votes in the evening, Huang said.
During his trip to Shanghai, Chiang stressed that he came in his role as KMT deputy chairman to express the government’s concerns to the businesspeople, adding that the election battle between Ma and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was “in fact an election on the [so-called] ‘1992 consensus.’”
“One is in support of the ‘1992 consensus,’ and the other is against it,” Chiang said, adding the Taiwanese businesspeople would know better than he what choice to make and what would be the consequences of those choices.
“Chiang is the SEF chairman and should not be able to go to China whenever he pleases,” Huang said. “Chiang even canvassed for votes for the KMT. What kind of government is this?”
“Chiang appears to be unclear on what his role is, which shows that not only does he lack legitimacy, it also shows that the Ma administration is ‘undisciplined,’” he added.
Translated by Jake Chung, staff writer
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