VOA News
23 Nov 2003, 20:11 UTC
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warns that China will not accept any move toward independence by Taiwan.
In a Friday interview published in today's (Sunday's) Washington Post newspaper, Mr. Wen said China will, in his words, pay any price to safeguard Chinese unity.
The Chinese premier said that by discussing a referendeum on a new constitution, Taiwanese leaders are clearly stepping up efforts to make the breakaway island republic an independent country. He called such discussions a "deliberate provocation."
Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian has been the main proponent of a new Taiwanese constitution, saying he wants to hold a vote on the issue in 2006.
But the Chinese government considers the island an integral part of China, and has said in the past it would take military action if Taiwan declared independence.
In other comments to the paper, Mr. Wen said China was "shocked" by the Bush Administration's decision to impose limits on imports of Chinese textiles.
He said the administration "seriously wounded" China by acting without consulting Beijing on the issue. He said the dispute over texitles should be resolved through dialogue.
U.S. officials have grown increasingly concerned with the widening U.S.-Chinese trade imbalance. China's surplus with the United States has topped $100 billion each of the last two years.
China's Xinhua news agency announced Sunday that Mr. Wen will visit the United States next month as part of a tour that will also take him to Canada, Mexico, and Ethiopia.
U.S. offiicals have argued that China keeps its currency (the yuan) at an artifically low exchange rate, making its imports cheaper in the United States. Mr. Wen said he does not think the exchange rate contributes to the imbalance, blaming it instead on what he called China's abundant supply of competitive labor.
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