Taiwan: Taiwan makes an Overture to Beijing
President Chen Shui-bian called Sunday for the opening of peace talks with
mainland China in a conciliatory overture after President Hu Jintao's consolidation
of power last month in Beijing.
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In a National Day speech here, Chen urged a special emphasis on arms control
after a mainland Chinese buildup of ballistic missiles pointed at Taiwan and
a recent Taiwanese threat to rocket Shanghai if the mainland attacks. "I
propose that both sides should seriously consider the issue of arms control
and take concrete actions to reduce tension and military threats across the
Taiwan Strait," Chen said, later adding, "In the long term, both
sides should formally end the state of hostility across the Taiwan Strait
and establish confidence-building measures through consultations and dialogues."
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Hu asked President George W. Bush in a telephone call last Thursday not to
proceed with plans to sell surveillance aircraft and other military equipment
to Taiwan. After talks in Beijing on Saturday with Hu, the French president,
Jacques Chirac, warned at a news conference, "We are worried about the
tense situation in this region that is currently worsening." There was
no immediate response from Beijing to Chen's proposal. Foreign policy analysts
predicted that mainland officials would initially reject it.
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Chen is deeply distrusted, disliked and even despised by Beijing officials
for his long advocacy of greater political independence for Taiwan - a record
that made his conciliatory tone on Sunday all the more noteworthy. But Hu's
consolidation of power in China - he became the chairman of the Central Military
Commission after the unexpected resignation last month of the former president,
Jiang Zemin - has created new interest in Taipei and Washington in trying
to reduce tensions across the Taiwan Strait.
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Chen made a clear reference on Sunday to Hu, who leads the new generation
of political leaders in Communist China. "Cross-strait relations are
not necessarily a zero-sum game," Chen said. "There will never be
a winner unless it's a win-win situation for both sides. I believe the fourth-generation
leadership on the other side of the strait should be able to fully understand
this point."
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Next January will mark the 10th anniversary of a speech by Jiang that laid
out a fairly hard line on Taiwan. Chinese leaders have given speeches each
January since then reiterating the same positions.
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Taiwanese officials have been hoping that by taking a softer tack now, they
might prompt a review and revision of policies in Beijing by January.
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Chen's room for political maneuver is somewhat limited until then anyway because
of legislative elections on Dec. 11. Chen's Democratic Progressive Party,
which has traditionally favored greater independence, looks increasingly likely
to capture a majority for the first time with its allies, the Taiwan Solidarity
Union.
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The two parties favoring closer relations with the mainland - the Nationalist
Party and the People First Party - are locked in a fratricidal struggle for
the support of the island's dwindling number of voters sympathetic to the
mainland and are expected to lose seats as a result under Taiwan's complex
electoral rules.
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In the section of Chen's speech likely to receive the greatest scrutiny in
Beijing, he suggested for the first time that Taiwan and mainland China revive
a brief flurry of contacts in Hong Kong and Singapore in 1992 between Taiwanese
and Chinese officials.
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Those contacts were possible then because the Nationalist Party was still
ruling Taiwan and because Taiwan and China agreed then that they both had
a "one-China policy," and agreed to disagree on what exactly that
policy was.
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But while Chen suggested that these contacts resume, he also made a series
of assertions of Taiwanese sovereignty that are certain to infuriate mainland
officials.
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Most notably, he seemed to define the Republic of China, the legal name that
the government here has used for decades, as the island of Taiwan but not
the mainland.
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"The sovereignty of the Republic of China is vested with the 23 million
people of Taiwan," he said. "The Republic of China is Taiwan, and
Taiwan is the Republic of China. This is an indisputable fact."
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Andrew Yang, the secretary general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy
Studies, an independent research group here, said Chen seemed to want to revive
the 1992 contacts while distancing himself from the acceptance of the one-China
principle that underpinned them.
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"It seems that the premise is to reopen the dialogue on an equal footing,"
Yang said, as talks between sovereign countries, something that Beijing is
unlikely to accept.
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Persuading the mainland to accept limits on arms purchases could also be difficult.
Rapid economic growth on the mainland has allowed the People's Liberation
Army to invest heavily in new missiles and other military equipment.
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Taiwan's government is still struggling to find the money to pay for American
weapons that Bush approved for sale three years ago.
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Chen said his government was also working on plans for chartered flights between
the mainland and Taiwan and wanted to improve protections for cross-strait
investments.
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Taiwan is one of the biggest sources of investment on the mainland.
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A parade preceding Chen's speech reflected his conciliatory tone: Instead
of rows of soldiers shouting martial slogans about retaking the mainland,
honor guards from the army, the navy and the air force performed a dancelike
drill with twirling rifles to the melody from "La Bamba," while
young girls in traditional southeastern Chinese attire twirled parasols and
boys pulled streamers of bright green, the color of Chen's party.
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The choice of music was partly in honor of visiting diplomats from several
small Latin American countries.
Source: IHT