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Cross-strait relations facing 'grave challenge': Chinese official

ROC Central News Agency

2016/09/01 20:09:17

Weifang City, China, Sept. 1 (CNA) Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), head of China's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), said Thursday that cross-strait relations are facing a "grave challenge" as the current Taiwan government has refused to recognize the "1992 consensus" and its core meaning.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration has adopted a "vague attitude" toward cross-strait relations, and has refused to acknowledge the "1992 consensus," which means at the core that both sides belong to one China, Zhang said.

"(This has) undermined the political foundation for peaceful development of cross-strait relations," Zhang said at the opening of a cross-strait innovation forum at the 22nd Shandong-Taiwan Economic & Trade Fair in Weifang City in Shandong Province.

However, he said, there will be no major changes to China's Taiwan policy.

China will maintain the "1992 consensus" as a political foundation and "resolutely oppose and contain any form of Taiwan independence separatist activities," he said.

China will continue to introduce measures that benefit cross-strait industrial cooperation and development, and create conditions to facilitate the transformation and upgrading of Taiwanese businesses in China, Zhang said.

He said China will also continue its efforts to make it easier for Taiwan's people to study, live, work and start businesses in China.

Speaking with the media after the forum, Zhang was asked about his views on the appointment of former foreign minister Tien Hung-mao (田弘茂) as the new head of Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), a semi-official organization responsible for cross-strait negotiations.

Zhang said if the SEF and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, were to resume talks, there would first have to be a common political foundation based on the "1992 consensus" and authorized by the Taiwan government.

The key to the problem is the political foundation, not the person, he said.

The "1992 consensus" refers to a tacit agreement between China and Taiwan, following talks in Hong Kong in 1992, that there is only one China but each side is free to interpret what that means.

The agreement paved the way for improved cross-strait ties during President Ma Ying-jeou's two terms of office that lasted until May. President Tsai Ing-wen's (蔡英文) pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party has never accepted the "1992 consensus."

(By Chiu Kuo-chiang and Christie Chen)
ENDITEM/pc