Beijing yesterday praised President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) call for Taiwanese to refer to China as “mainland China” or “the other side,” a move that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said constituted political manipulation.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Yang Yi (楊毅) said that Chinese officials had seen reports of Ma’s comment on the matter and they welcomed the move wholeheartedly.
“There is only one China in the world and the mainland and Taiwan belong to China,” Yang said. “Before the two sides are unified, the fact that the mainland and Taiwan are part of China remains unchanged.”
Yang made the remarks during a question-and-answer session at a weekly press conference in Beijing.
Ma suggested that government officials refer to China as “mainland China” or “the other side” verbally or in written documents at a tea party with leading government and legislative officials on Feb. 7.
DPP legislators have accused Ma of denigrating Taiwan’s sovereignty by using such designations.
Presidential Office spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) defended Ma’s call, citing Article 11 of the amendments to the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution, which he said stipulates that the rights, obligations and relationship of the people of the “free area and mainland area” must be regulated by special laws.
Article 2 of the Act Governing Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) also defines the “mainland area” as ROC territory outside the “Taiwan area,” he said.
Ma has said that China is part of ROC territory, as stated in the Constitution.
Meanwhile, Yang yesterday offered a boilerplate answer to the question by a Taiwanese reporter as to why China was pressuring Taiwan to change the name it used at the Conference of Governors of South East Asian Central Banks.
“Regarding the issue of Taiwan’s participation in international organizations or activities, our attitude and position remain clear,” Yang said. “The two sides can make perfectly logical and reasonable arrangements through pragmatic negotiations under the precondition that there are no ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China and one Taiwan.’”
As for Ma’s intention to seek re-election next year, Yang said Chinese officials had seen related reports and he emphasized that peaceful development across the Taiwan Strait was important.
“The peaceful development of cross-strait relations meets the expectations of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and brings genuine interest to them,” he said. “We are willing to work together with Taiwan to continue to push forward the peaceful development of cross-strait ties.”
Reacting to Beijing’s warm reception of Ma’s comments, the DPP yesterday accused Beijing of choosing sides, adding that this constituted political manipulation.
It also showed how Ma’s remarks have played “straight into Beijing’s hopes, interests and ways of thinking,” DPP spokesperson Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) told the Taipei Times last night.
“Inadvertently, perhaps, Ma has fulfilled China’s ‘one China’ policies through those remarks, shown by the comments from the Taiwan Affairs Office,” he said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY VINCENT Y. CHAO
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS