Plan for Confederation With Mainland Reflects Evolving Public Opinion
on Island
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 9, 2001
BEIJING,
July 8 -- Taiwan's main opposition party is poised to endorse the
idea of creating a confederation with China, a major policy change
that would intensify an already fractious political battle on the
island between proponents of unification with China and those who
want independence.
On Saturday, the Nationalist Party issued a policy paper on relations
with China that argued that the best option for Taiwan would be to
form a confederation under which both entities would maintain their
central governments and control their own diplomacy, national defense
and internal affairs.
Nationalist officials said they expected the policy to be approved
by the party's Central Standing Committee this week and by its national
congress at the end of the month. The policy would then become the
party's official platform for legislative, mayoral and county magistrate
elections in December.
The policy, proposed by party leader Lien Chan, who was defeated
in last year's presidential election, is the furthest any major Taiwanese
political organization has gone in proposing a union with China. It
constitutes a serious challenge to Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian,
who before taking office had advocated independence, and illustrates
how far parts of Taiwan's society have come in the past year toward
accepting the proposition that unification with Beijing is inevitable.
The percentage of Taiwanese who say they could accept the "one-country,
two-system" arrangement under which China regained possession
of Hong Kong from Britain in 1997 is reportedly the highest it has
been in years -- about 33 percent, up from 23 percent last December,
according to a survey by the United Daily News.
The
Nationalist move also presents a challenge for the Bush administration.
President Bush has said he will base his Asian policy in part on forging
stronger ties with Taiwan, backed by a multibillion-dollar weapons
sale designed to free the island from worrying about forced unification
with China for years. The action by the Nationalists indicates that
at least one major political entity on Taiwan is actively preparing
for that eventuality.
The Nationalists, who fled the mainland after their defeat by Communist
forces in 1949, governed Taiwan until last year, when Chen became
the first outside candidate to win the presidency. Until this weekend,
the Nationalists' policy was essentially to stall for time and maintain
the status quo, neither rejecting unity with China nor doing anything
to further it.
A combination of factors contributed to the new Nationalist policy.
First, there is a sense that the democratic, self-governing island
is adrift; it lacks political leadership and its economy has sunk
to its lowest point in 19 years. At the same time, China's economy
continues to grow and attract not only Taiwanese investment but Taiwanese
immigration.
About
50,000 Taiwanese companies manufacture goods on the mainland, with
total investment of more than $45 billion. An increasing number of
influential Taiwanese say the way to improve Taiwan's economy is to
forge closer ties with Beijing.
Second,
since losing power, the Nationalists have attempted to portray their
party as the only one that can improve ties with Beijing and have
criticized Chen, who has adopted a cautious policy toward Beijing.
The Communist government here has helped to bolster that impression,
inviting high-ranking Nationalist officials and legislators to Beijing.
The "confederation" plank is another part of that program,
although some analysts in Taiwan wondered whether Lien was going too
far in extending an olive branch to Beijing.
It's not clear whether Lien's gambit will succeed. In an interview
in March, President Jiang Zemin said China could not accept a confederation,
and other officials have rejected the idea that Beijing and Taiwan
are equals. Beijing maintains that Taiwan is part of China and has
threatened to invade the island if it declares independence.
A large percentage of Taiwan's 23 million people, including former
president Lee Teng-hui, are still extremely wary of close ties with
Beijing. Lee opposes reunification and in recent weeks, he has all
but thrown his support behind Chen and encouraged talk among his supporters
within the Nationalist Party about forming a splinter party.
The new policy was unveiled by the National Policy Foundation, a
Nationalist Party research group, and presented by Su Chi, the former
head of the Mainland Affairs Council, the government agency that first
set Taiwan's policy toward the mainland under Lee.
TOKYO - Japan will prioritize rescuing Japanese nationals in Taiwan
if the island becomes involved in a conflict with China, Defense Agency
chief Gen Nakatani said Sunday.
Asked what Japan will do if China and Taiwan clash, Nakatani said
in a meeting with residents in Kuwana, Mie Prefecture, that Japan's
actions would depend on the circumstances.
Japan Today
Teruaki Ueno
Monday, July 9, 2001 at 18:30 JST
TOKYO - In a move that has angered South Korea and is certain to
infuriate China, Japan on Monday rejected calls for major revisions
to a history textbook that critics say whitewashes Tokyo's wartime
atrocities, Japanese officials said.
South
Korea warned of tougher action to protest against the Japanese government's
approval of the junior high school text, which Seoul says justifies
Japan's invasion of much of Asia in the early 20th century and glosses
over war crimes.
"We cannot accept the results of the Japanese government's review
of the textbooks," Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Han Seung-soo
was quoted as telling Japan's ambassador to South Korea.
"We
would take tougher measures to deal with the issue, while continuing
to push Japan to make changes to the books," a ministry official
quoted Han as telling the Japanese ambassador. The official gave no
further details.
A ministry spokesman said it had not yet worked out concrete steps
to take.
But Japanese and South Korean media said South Korean President Kim
Dae-jung was expected to refuse to meet senior officials from Japan's
three ruling coalition parties who arrived in Seoul on Sunday.
The history book approved by Tokyo in April has strained Japanese
diplomatic ties, especially with China and South Korea, who have both
demanded extensive revisions.
"We greatly regret the result, which reflects a clear disregard
for the concerns and interests of the Korean people," South Korea's
foreign ministry said in a statement.
Japan told South Korea and China on Monday that the textbook contained
no "clear mistakes" in its descriptions of modern and contemporary
history, Japanese Education Ministry officials said.
Seoul
says the book fails to explain the plight of 100,000 "comfort
women", most from the Korean Peninsula, forced to provide sex
to Japanese troops during World War Two.
It objects to Japan's justification of its 1910-1945 occupation of
the peninsula as necessary for stability.
Seoul had urged Japan to act to resolve the thorny issue ahead of
the two countries' staging of next year's World Cup soccer finals.
The decision was likely to enrage China, with whom relations are
already strained by trade spats and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's
controversial pledge to visit the Yasukuni Shrine for Japan's war
dead.
If local education authorities in Japan choose the book from among
eight newly approved junior high school history books, it would be
used from April 2002, the start of the Japanese school year.
Tokyo
has said the textbook, which was written for school-children aged
13 to 15, does not represent the government's official view of history.
Education
Minister Atsuko Toyama said Tokyo had taken seriously the South Korean
and Chinese requests for revisions and examined them "fully and
sincerely within the framework of Japan's textbook screening system".
An earlier revision of the book excised a reference playing down
the scale of the Nanjing Massacre, in which China says as many as
300,000 civilians died when Japanese troops overran the eastern city
in December 1937.
But a screening panel left in other controversial sections, including
parts that describe Japanese troops as braving "death with honour".
On Saturday, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said the government would
continue to push Japan to make changes to the book, adding that two-way
ties would be seriously hurt if Tokyo refused to cooperate.
South Korean television said that Seoul would take various measures,
including delaying the opening of its market to previously banned
Japanese products.
Japanese history textbooks, periodically updated under a screening
system by the Education Ministry, have aroused fierce debate at home
and in Asian countries invaded by Japan in the first half of the 20th
century.
"Starting with the World Cup to be co-hosted by Japan and South
Korea, we would like to make further efforts to realise relations
with our neighbours appropriate for the 21st century, by further deepening
exchanges in education, academic, sports and cultural fields,"
Education Minister Toyama said. (Reuters News)
美國於中共導彈之撞機事件中，記取教訓，對中共要求一百萬美金的補償不想再妥協。
U.S.
rejects China's tab of US$1m for spy plane
2001-07-08
WASHINGTON
The United States has no intention of paying a US$1 million bill
China has submitted for the three months a Navy reconnaissance plane
spent on Chinese soil, a State Department official said.
The plane made an emergency landing on the Chinese island of Hainan
on April 1 after colliding with a Chinese military aircraft. It was
disassembled and returned to the United States this week.
A State Department official, asking not to be identified, said Friday
the expenses were exaggerated.
This came a day after Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman,
said the administration was prepared to reimburse China for reasonable
costs.
The costs were related mostly to support provided by the Chinese
government and local businesses while a Lockheed Martin recovery crew
was on Hainan.
The disassembled plane was flown to Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia
on Thursday.
Zhang Yuan Yuan, the spokesman at the Chinese Embassy, said he had
no idea where the US$1 million figure came from. He said the two sides
will hold talks to decide on an appropriate compensation figure.
A senior State Department official said the figure was based on a
fax sent by Chinese officials to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. The
fax was several pages long and contained an itemized list of the charges,
he said.
The downing of the plane initially caused acrimony between the two
countries but both have seemed eager in recent days for a more productive
relationship.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage noted Friday that China
has been more accommodating lately partly because it is interested
in successful trips to China by Secretary of State Colin Powell later
this month and by President George W. Bush in October.
As
an example of Chinese cooperation, Armitage noted that Beijing has
moved closer to the administration's position on a new system of "smart
sanctions" for Iraq that would allow greater flows of civilian
goods while tightening up military-related imports and smuggling.
Earlier, China had been aligning itself with Russia's opposition
to the administration plan.
The Washington Post reported Friday that China softened its position
after the United States dropped its objections to more than US$80
million in frozen Chinese business deals with Iraq.
"I don't think the Chinese are swayed by US$80 million,"
Armitage said, suggesting that China has higher priorities on its
agenda.
In New York, China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Yingfan was asked about
the newspaper's report.
"I don't think that that's a kind of trading off like that,"
he said. "We have our principles, and we have discussed with
U.S., and on the basic items we finally agreed. Certainly, I think
they have tried to meet with our concern about this."
