• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

[Page: E140]

• Mr. FRANKS of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring to my colleagues' attention to an excellent article by Dr. Winston L. Yang, chairman of the department of Asian studies at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ, discusses the Taiwan-Mainland China relations under Premier Lien Chan of Taiwan.

• Mr. Speaker, it is my hope that my colleagues will refer to this article when issues related to the future of Taiwan and the Republic of China are debated on the House floor.

• The article follows:

Since his appointment as Premier of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan in early 1993, Lien Chan has been advocating more people-to-people exchanges between Taiwan and Mainland China in the media, culture and art, economy and finance, and science and technology. He attaches special importance to the free exchange of information between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits to promote better understanding and cooperation in these fields. Lien calls upon the Communist authorities to leave behind the `It's you or me' zero-sum conflict, and to join the ROC in creating a `win-win' situation. A win-win policy is the best guarantee, in his view, for achieving national reconciliation and eventual reunification.

Lien Chan has repeatedly stressed that the ROC is entitled to enjoy international recognition prior to reunification. The ROC's decision to participate in the U.N. is not intended to create a permanent split between the two sides. On the contrary, the ROC's membership in this world body would increase its confidence in the principle of reunification of China and trigger more active measures to pursue eventual reunion. The Chinese Communists would be enlightened if they would turn to the case of East and West Germany, which were coexisting members of the United Nations and later unified. North and South Korea serve as another example of full participation by a divided country in the United Nations and as solid evidence that separated political entities can simultaneously belong to an international organization. The ROC's efforts to participate in the United Nations must be carried out in line with the principle of a unified China, and will, Lien Chan believes, have positive effects on eventual reunification.

Reversing separate foreign and mainland policies independent of each other, Premier Lien has established links between the two. Taiwan has taken a number of actions to improve relations with Peking, including the renunciation of the use of force to achieve national reunification and the lifting of extensive restrictions on people-to-people exchanges. But until and unless the mainland responds positively to Taipei's good-will overtures, the ROC will not initiate official links and formal negotiations with the mainland. Peking must first halt its efforts to isolate Taipei internationally and renounce the use of force against Taiwan.

The Premier has obviously injected new and innovative ideas into the ROC's established policy toward the mainland. Taiwan has demonstrated a new sense of pragmatism and flexibility, which has won broad support both at home and abroad.

While maintaining a firm stand on the principles of the Mainland China policy, Lien's pragmatism is well reflected in his approach to the 1993 Koo-Wang talks. In view of the growing problems arising from the contacts and exchanges between Taiwan and the mainland in the early 1990s, the ROC Government established the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) and a `private' Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) to resolve emerging difficulties. The SEF has been authorized to make contacts and conduct negotiations on non-political issues of mutual concern with its Chinese Communist counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS). Encouraged by the Premier and President Lee, the chairman of SEF, Koo Chen-foo, reached four agreements with his mainland counterpart, Wang Tao-han, the ARATS chairman, in their meetings in Singapore in April 1993. However, a number of Taiwan independence advocates and DPP leaders firmly opposed these agreements and initiated actions in both Taiwan and Singapore to block their signing. Keenly aware of the importance of these agreements to any future improvement in Taiwan-mainland exchanges, the pragmatic Premier, despite his strong anti-Communist stand, rejected the opposition, clearing the way for the signing of these historic agreements, which are the first such accords between Taiwan and the mainland since 1949. In August 1994, the Premier allowed both sides to meet in Taipei and again encouraged Taipei's representatives to reach important agreements with the mainland's delegates.

END