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DPP will seek to maintain cross-strait peace under ROC Constitution

ROC Central News Agency

2016/02/26 20:20:48

Taipei, Feb. 26 (CNA) In response to remarks by China on ties with Taiwan, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said Friday that the party, which will take power in May, will seek to maintain the peaceful and stable status quo across the Taiwan Strait in accordance with the Republic of China Constitution.

DPP spokesman Yang Chia-liang (楊家俍) said that President-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who is also chairwoman of the party, has made it clear that her administration will make every effort to ensure that peaceful and stable cross-strait relations will continue.

Those efforts will be based on the ROC Constitution and the consensus of the people of Taiwan, Yang added.

Yang was responding to remarks by China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅) in which he expressed hope that the person in power in Taiwan 'will indicate that she wants to pursue the peaceful development of cross-Taiwan Strait relations and that she will accept the provision in their own constitution that the mainland and Taiwan belong to one China.'

'She is elected on the basis of the current constitution of Taiwan, which still recognizes the mainland and Taiwan as one, the same China,' Wang said during a question-and-answer session following a speech at a think tank in Washington.

'It will be difficult to imagine that someone who is elected on the basis of that constitution should try to do anything in violation of their own constitution,' he said.

China does not care that much who is in power in Taiwan, but what it cares about is 'once someone has come into power, how he or she handles cross-strait relations, whether he or she will maintain the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, whether he or she will recommit to the political foundation of cross-strait relations,' he said during the event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

In his remarks, Wang did not mention 'the 1992 consensus,' and his use of 'constitution' was also a rare move.

When commenting on cross-strait ties, officials under China's Taiwan Affairs Office usually stress the importance of the '1992 consensus,' but refrain from mentioning anything like 'ROC Constitution' or 'ROC president.'

Liu Fu-kuo (劉復國), a research fellow at National Chengchi University's Institute of International Relations, said that Wang's mentioning of 'constitution' shows that the ROC constitution is the common ground among Taiwan's major parties, Beijing and Washington.

The incoming DPP government should seek to develop cross-strait ties based on that, Liu said.

Citing the remarks by Tsai and Wang, the scholar said that the constitution will be the new starting point for the DPP government in its engagement with China.

During her campaign, Tsai has said that if elected president, she will push for the peaceful and stable development of cross-strait relations in accordance with the will of the Taiwanese people and the ROC Constitution.

(By Lu Hsin-hui, Tang Pei-chun and Elaine Hou)
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