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DPP rejects Chinese
officials’ independence comments
‘GRAVE MISTAKE’: Former foreign minister Mark
Chen said remarks by Chinese officials about Taiwan’s independence show
ignorance of the country as well as international law
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
A Beijing official made a grave mistake when he said everything is negotiable
between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
if the DPP gives up on independence, pro-independence DPP politicians said
yesterday.
“He had it backwards. Everything is negotiable between the two parties if China
gives up the idea of unifying Taiwan,” Legislator Mark Chen (陳唐山) told a press
conference.
Chen was referring to a comment made by National Committee of the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Conference chairman Yu Zhengsheng (俞正聲) in a
recent interview with a Taiwanese media outlet.
A former foreign minister, Chen said that the key element of cross-strait
engagement is reciprocity, adding that if Beijing were serious about further
engaging with Taiwan, it would need to understand what is on the mind of
Taiwanese and respect Taiwan’s current de facto independence.
Citing a comment made by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) during his visit to
Germany that the sovereignty of Taiwan had been returned to China under the
Potsdam Declaration in 1945 and the Cairo Declaration in 1943, former DPP
legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) said Li’s remark showed a “lack of basic
knowledge of international law.”
The status of Taiwan was neither determined in Potsdam and Cairo nor in San
Francisco, where the Treaty of San Francisco was signed between Japan and part
of the Allied powers in 1951, because the Chinese Civil War meant that the
Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) could not
represent China at the time, Chai said.
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