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US legislator intrigued by ‘one
country, two areas’
By Shih Hsiu-chuan / Staff reporter
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Timothy Yang, left, yesterday welcomes US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
second left, who is chairwoman of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and
some other guests at a lunch party in Taipei.
Photo: CNA
US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
yesterday said she was intrigued by the “one country, two areas (一國兩區)” formula
advocated by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) during his inauguration speech and
added that she would seek clarification about its implications.
“We asked him [Ma] about the statement he had made. We asked other individuals
as well about that phrase and how it could be interpreted in different ways,”
Ros-Lehtinen said.
The chairwoman of the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs,
who is leading a US congressional delegation on a visit to Taipei, took
questions from reporters before a luncheon banquet hosted by Minister of Foreign
Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building
yesterday.
The delegation met Ma and Mainland Affairs Council Minister Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛)
in the morning.
The way Ma has characterized the cross-strait “status quo” as “two areas” under
“one Republic of China [ROC]” framework in his speech drew the ire of pan-green
groups over concerns about the nation’s sovereignty.
Asked about her views on the formula and its critics, Ros-Lehtinen was reluctant
to comment, but her answers implied that the issue was one of the concerns
raised by the delegation during its visits with government officials and party
leaders.
“It’s not up to the United States Congress or our delegation to decide for the
Taiwanese people and government what best strategy they should pursue,” she
said.
“We certainly have our opinions [on the phrase]. We may not be in unison on
that, but many of us are very free in expressing our opinions when we meet with
the various leaders, as well as opposition leaders,” said Ros-Lehtinen, who is
scheduled to meet Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members and former DPP
presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) this week.
Ros-Lehtinen did not give details of the meetings, but said “our concerns have
always been that we want Taiwan to remain the beacon of hope, of opportunity, of
freedom, of prosperity, of human rights, just as we hope that our country will
always be that shining city on the hill as [former] US president Ronald Reagan
said.”
The US will not impose on Taiwan and its people ideas about what they should do
because “they freely express themselves and opinions in their voting” and the US
“respected the process,” she said.
Executive Yuan spokesperson Hu Yu-wei (胡幼偉) said yesterday that the concept of
“one country, two areas” was a matter of “common sense” that “every senior-high
school student” has already absorbed.
Every senior-high school student knows about Article 4 of the Constitution
regarding national territory, based on which “we have sovereignty over the
mainland [sic], but we admit that we have no jurisdiction over it,” Hu said.
The article in question that Hu cited does not specifically make reference to
the ROC’s territory as including the land area encompassed by the People’s
Republic of China or a “mainland area.” Instead, it states that the ROC’s
territory “according to its existing national boundaries shall not be altered
except by resolution” of the now-defunct National Assembly.
The phrase “one country, two areas” was not a newly created term, but one in
accordance with the Act Governing the Relations between the People of the Taiwan
Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), a law enacted to meet the needs of
cross-strait interactions, Hu said.
Hu said the phrase was different from the “one country, two systems” formulation
created by Beijing to allow Hong Kong to have a different political system from
China.
On security issues, Ros-Lehtinen said the US Congress had acted in a bipartisan
manner to provide Taiwan with more sophisticated military hardware to meet its
defense needs, including F-16C/D aircraft and diesel-electric submarines.
Asked about Taiwan’s budget constraints, Ros-Lehtinen said “we are encouraging
Taiwan to beef up its allotment for its defense allocation. We think it’s in the
best interest of Taiwan and it’s also in the best interest of the US.”
“We hope that Taiwan does its share and we will also continue to do our share.
It is [of] mutual benefit to our countries to make sure that [Taiwan’s] defense
allocation is raised a bit, and Taiwan will know that the US will have her
back,” she said.
At a banquet with DPP members last night, Ros-Lehtinen described the missiles
deployed by China against Taiwan as “a modern version” of the Cuban missile
crisis and highlighted the importance of preserving Taiwan’s democracy to serve
as a beacon to brighten the future of people in China to build its democracy.
Beijing “bullies” Taiwan’s democracy by deploying 1,500 -missiles across the
Taiwan Strait, which was no wider than the Straits of Florida that separates
Cuba and the US, said Ros-Lehtinen, who moved from Cuba to the US when she was
eight.
“So I think Taiwan today is facing a modern version of what we encountered in
the Cuban missile crisis, yet you have demonstrated to Beijing that political
power does not come from gun barrels, but from ballot boxes,” she said.
Taiwan’s struggle for democracy ranks at the top of many important moments since
the end of World War II, a list included the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the
People Power Revolution in the Philippines, the fall of the Berlin Wall and
democratic revolution in Cuba, she said.
“In the Chinese Confucius culture world, [Taiwan’s democracy] is a precious
achievement, which must be most preserved and protected,” she said.
China is years behind Taiwan when it comes to democratic values and the rule of
law, she said, adding that democratic achievements in Taiwan would “shine as a
beacon across the narrow Strait to the hundreds of millions of slaves, under the
dark tyranny on the Chinese mainland [sic].”
She said that Taiwan offers an “irreplaceable” civic lesson to the Chinese that
the iron curtain on the borders with communist states can be broken, which is
why China has tried to isolate Taiwan and denied it international space.
Ros-Lehtinen said she would continue to work to assure that US-Taiwan relations
will be strengthened in the months and years ahead.
“Together, let’s work together to ensure that there is no backsliding in Taiwan
democracy,” she said.
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