Chen endorses ‘opening Taiwan up’

Seeking to quell loud protests against government plans to allow further high-tech investment in the mainland, President Chen Shui-bian said yesterday that now is not the time for Taiwan to stick its head in the sand.

“Sometimes, economy blockades may not be the best strategy. Passively banning (investments toward mainland China) may not be the best method,” the president told the two-day World Taiwanese Congress that began yesterday.

“We should never be afraid of, nor reject, opening Taiwan up. Taiwan has to reach out to the world. The more internationalized Taiwan becomes, the safer we will be,” the president said.

In his speech, the president did not explicitly refer to the government’s plans to allow semiconductor companies to build eight-inch wafer fabrication plants in the mainland.

But observers said the speech indicated that the government has a consensus on opening the door for such investments, despite strong opposition from some quarters.

Opponents to the idea said it would advance mainland China’s high-tech sector at the expense of the island’s economic resources.

The Taiwan Solidarity Union, a fledgling party that holds 13 seats in the 225-seat Legislature, earlier even organized a protest, asking the government to hold back the new measures.

Chen, whose administration extols a more open relationship with mainland China on the economic front, said allowing the chip investments governed with good communications and “active management” would better serve the island.

“Taiwan needs to take a breath, to continue to survive and develop,” he said.

The president also touched on government revamping in the speech. He said not only the government needs to be reformed, so does the legislature and political parties.

Chen said the population-to-lawmakers ratio in Taiwan, which stands at 100,000-to-1 now, is far too high compared with ratios in other democracies, such as the United States and Japan.

The Democratic Progressive Party government has planned to halve the size of the legislature.

Taiwan has to overhaul its election system and cut the legislative seats to allow the legislature to more effectively check the government, said Chen.

The World Taiwanese Congress, which seeks to write a new constitution to change the name of the country from “the Republic of China” to “Taiwan,” was formed last year by more than 400 Formosans from around the world.

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Most participants of the two-day conference are delegates from overseas pro-Taiwan independence organizations.

During the speech, Chen said the DPP government is “unconditionally, genuinely and sincerely supportive” of Formosans for independence.

But Chen did not say the government supports Taiwan independence. Outside the conference room, dozens of unification advocates chanted anti-independence slogans.

The third major re-engineering task at hand is the reform of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, Chen said.

He said the former opposition party, whose major aim was the promotion of a democratic movement, has been incapable of interacting with the government since it came to power.

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