Breaking News, World News and Taiwan News.

Updated Friday, February 25, 2011 11:43 am TWN, The China Post news staff

Sponsors
▪	Find great real time deals on China Flights. Book flights to China or China domestic flights 24/7.
▪	Buy china wholesale products from reliable chinese wholesalers on DHgate.com!
▪	Save 75% for all hotels in Shanghai, Beijing and whole China. Lowest rates for Flights in China.
▪	Get the best deals for Guangzhou Hotels or choose from more than 10,000 hotels in 499 Chinese cities.

Tsai's new cross-strait approach is not intended for China

The Democratic Progressive Party's chairwoman has unveiled a new discourse to define and approach cross-strait ties. But will Beijing ignore it just as it has done to previous attempts at remodeling the framework for relationships between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait?

Tsai Ing-wen's new policy, unveiled at a ceremony marking the opening of the DPP's new think tank yesterday, shares one fundamental platform with all other pro-independence advocates' theories: they all stress a Taiwan identity with Taiwanese values at the core.

It may be difficult to define such Taiwanese values in absolute terms, but it has to be understood only in relation to the other side's “China-ness.” That is, the emphasis placed on Taiwan is a statement that the two sides are different, and have their own existence culturally, historically, sociologically and politically.

This clearly has political implications although Tsai has not spelt them out: Taiwan and China are two separate sovereign countries and should remain so. Any theories or proposals based on such a premise, commitment, or belief is unlikely to be accepted by China. We'll come back to this after looking at some other major points that Tsai has presented.

The DPP chief suggests that the two sides must tolerate differences and seek common ground in order to maintain peace, which she says is the responsibility of both Taiwan and China. She calls for a larger framework for cross-strait ties, saying no “political presumptions” should be pressure or repress such ties into a “historical framework” — a clear reference to the fact that both sides once belonged to the same country.

She says Taipei-Beijing relations should be set to an international framework, so that Taiwan and its Asian neighbors can stand together to face the rise of China. But there is one major omission from her discourse, that is the so-called “1992 Consensus” that both China and her domestic rivals from the ruling Kuomintang claim underlies cross-strait ties.

Although the Chinese communists and the nationalists cannot agree on what was actually agreed on in their 1992 talks, their own interpretations of that consensus contains one common key phrase — “one China” — the “historical framework” hinted at in Tsai's discourse. One China serves as the point of departure from all the friendly exchanges that have occurred after Ma Ying-jeou became president in 2008.

1|2|Next Page>>