About 3,000 Lienchiang County (Matsu) residents have applied for a membership card that provides them with discounts during visits to Fuzhou, China, National Security Bureau (NSB) Deputy Director-General Hsu Hsi-hsiang (徐錫祥) said yesterday.
Hsu told the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee that the bureau has been closely monitoring the controversial “Fuzhou-Matsu City Pass,” an initiative launched in late February by the government of China’s Fujian Province to offer preferential discounts to visitors from Matsu.
The NSB has learned that as of yesterday, about 3,000 Matsu residents had applied for the card, Hsu said, adding that all relevant information obtained by the NSB is being passed to the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), Taiwan’s top government agency in charge of China affairs.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Hsu declined to say whether the Lienchiang County Government breached Taiwanese law by helping residents apply for the cards, specifically the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例).
That determination would have to be made by the MAC, he said, in response to a question by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Chu-yin (林楚茵), during the legislative hearing.
Lin said the Lienchiang County Government might have contravened the act by helping county residents apply for the Fuzhou-Matsu City Pass.
Citing Article 33-1 of the act, Lin said no government agency in Taiwan is allowed to engage in cooperative actions with its Chinese counterpart, unless it obtains central government permission to do so.
Lin and other DPP lawmakers have said that the Fuzhou-Matsu City Pass is part of China’s efforts to beguile Taiwanese to support unification between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. They also said that the Lienchiang County Government is working with the Chinese government to achieve that goal.
On Wednesday last week, MAC Deputy Minister Jan Jyh-horng (詹志宏) said the Lienchiang County Government had consulted the MAC in early March after receiving a request from Chinese authorities to help handle applications for the Fuzhou-Matsu City Pass.
The MAC advised that such a move would contravene Article 33-1 of the act, Jan said, adding that the county government subsequently halted its plans to help facilitate the applications.
However, media reports in China and Taiwan said that at least one batch of membership cards was issued to Matsu residents on Monday last week by the government of China’s Fujian Province.
In addition to travel subsidies, the membership card also allows holders to easily enroll their children in Fuzhou schools, a news release issued in February by the Fujian provincial government said.
The membership card was also mentioned by the Chinese central government, when it announced 13 beneficial initiatives aimed at Taiwanese during a visit by 17 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers to Beijing from April 26 to 28.
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