China’s central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan (周小川) said on Friday that the contents of a cross-strait memorandum of understanding (MOU) or economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) could be modeled after “the experience China had with Hong Kong.”
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said Zhou’s remarks suggested that China places Taiwan in the same category as Hong Kong, weakening the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government’s claim that Taiwan would be on equal footing with China when negotiating a cross-strait economic pact.
DPP Spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said that economic cooperation with Beijing, whether signing an MOU on cross-strait financial exchanges or the suggested ECFA, was based on the blueprint of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangements (CEPA) that Hong Kong and Macau signed with China in 2003.
These pacts were all designed using a “one China” framework that would compromise Taiwan’s sovereignty, Cheng said.
The issue of an MOU on mutual financial cooperation is expected to be inked in the third round of cross-strait negotiations between Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, scheduled to take place in Beijing in May or June.
At a press conference on Friday, Zhou said that despite the recent increase in cross-strait financial exchanges, there were still restrictions stifling financial services industries that could be resolved by following the Hong Kong-China model.
Cheng disagreed with Zhou, saying that, despite having signed a CEPA with China, Hong Kong banks still face tremendous barriers in China.
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) plan to revitalize Taiwan’s economy by signing an MOU with Beijing was nothing short of wishful thinking, Cheng said, adding that the biggest danger in Ma’s plan would be the potential leakage of customers’ personal information.
Taiwan Thinktank chairman Chen Poh-chih (陳博志) said China had always made it clear that its ultimate goal of cross-strait integration is to annex Taiwan. He said that China was luring Taiwan into becoming more financially dependent on Beijing.
Executive Yuan Spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) yesterday told the Taipei Times that the government would not compromise Taiwan’s sovereignty when signing any agreement with China because the status of Taiwan is completely different to that of Hong Kong or Macau.
“If [China] insisted on cross-strait agreements being signed under a political framework, it would be against our wish that cross-strait negotiations should only deal with economic issues for the moment,” Su said.
Su reiterated the government’s position that it would not sign agreements with China under the “one China” principle and again appealed to China to “set aside political disputes.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHIH HSIU-CHUAN
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