Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met with former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, with Xi’s opening statement once more emphasizing that people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are Chinese and that foreign intervention cannot change their inevitable unification.
Xi said that 5,000 years of history of zhonghua minzu (中華民族, ethnic Chinese group) have seen their ancestors move to Taiwan to establish new lives, while also documenting them fighting side-by-side against foreign forces and finally freeing Taiwan.
“Both sides are Chinese,” and there are no issues that cannot be worked through, he said, adding that no force can separate them.
Photo: screenshot from livestream
The youth is the hope of a country and of its people, and young people on both sides of the Strait should find within them the will to be proud of their ancestry and work together to jointly create a prosperous future for zhonghua minzu, he said.
Ma said the young members of his delegation deeply appreciate the enthusiasm of their Chinese hosts, and their experiences over the past few days as their travels around China have brought them closer to their cultural roots.
They have seen China’s development firsthand and felt the bonds that tie the two sides together, he added.
The Republic of China (ROC) and zhonghua minzu had weathered a century of humiliation in the past, but joint efforts across the Taiwan Strait over the past three decades have slowly brought zhonghua minzu back to prominence, he said.
While people on both sides of the Strait live under different governing philosophies, they are both Chinese people and should help one another to revitalize zhonghua minzu, Ma said, adding that this was the ideal he and “Mr Xi” agreed on at their meeting in 2015.
Ma said he hoped both sides would cherish the values and ways of life of their respective societies.
Quoting Chinese writer Lu Xun (魯迅), he said: “Though we suffered tribulations and hardships, we remain brothers; let us greet one another with smiles, and let bygones be bygones (渡盡劫波兄弟在、相逢一笑泯恩仇)” to emphasize that war would be unbearable to zhonghua minzu as a whole.
Ma’s statement yesterday potentially puts a new spin on the so-called “1992 consensus,” as he stated that while both sides in 1992 had verbally expressed their understanding of “one China,” future generations should prioritize public welfare, adhere to the “1992 consensus” and jointly reject Taiwanese independence.
The so-called “1992 consensus,” a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi ( 蘇起 ) in 2006 admitted to making up in 2000, refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that both sides of the Strait acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
Ma is in China as part of what he has called a “journey of peace” to calm tensions with Beijing, which has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.
Additional reporting by AFP
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