President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday urged China to scrap the growing number of missiles aimed at Taiwan, adding that he would not exclude the possibility of meeting Chinese leaders one day.
Taiwan planned to buy more weapons from the US to protect itself, although it did not want an arms race with China as trade ties expand and with more deals expected to be signed in the coming year or so, Ma said.
“[There are] more than 1,000 [missiles] and they haven’t changed that. The number continues to go up. That is certainly a great concern for the people here,” Ma said during an interview at the Presidential Office.
“If we are to negotiate a peace agreement with the mainland, certainly we expect them to do something about those missiles, either to remove them or dismantle them,” said Ma, who has attempted to ease tensions with China since taking office in May last year.
The 59-year-old Ma, who became chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over the weekend, said he would not rule out meeting Chinese leaders, such as his counterpart Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
“I won’t exclude that possibility, but there’s no timetable for that yet,” Ma said, when asked if he would meet Hu. “At the moment, we have our hands full with economic issues.”
Despite political differences, commercial ties have flourished. China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner with two-way trade of more than US$130 billion, while Taiwanese businesses have poured more than US$100 billion into China.
Ma said the nation needed to diversify its exports to stay competitive and forecast 4 percent economic growth next year. He also said Taiwan expected to sign a deal similar to a free-trade agreement with China next year that would cut tariffs.
The president hopes more of the exports that go to China would be sold to the Chinese domestic market, instead of being re-exported to advanced economies, such as the US and Europe, that have been harder hit by the steep global downturn.
“It’s not possible for us to change the economy, [which is] based on exports, but we could diversify the export market, not focusing entirely on the United States or Europe,” Ma said. “Actually, the largest export destination is mainland China, but many of the goods with mainland China are reprocessed to be re-exported to the US and Europe, so we will modify that policy so that mainland China is no longer treated only as a factory, but rather as a market.”
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