KMT hails China's response to call for truce on expatriate front

KMT Deputy Secretary-General Chang Jung-kung made the remarks after Wang Yi, director of the Taiwan Affairs Office under China's State Council, said in Los Angeles the previous day that the once-strained cross-strait relations have taken a historic turn for the better over the past year.

Against this backdrop, Wang said at a meeting with Chinese expatriate community leaders at China's Consulate General in Los Angeles that the concept of “a truce and no attrition of resources” on the diplomatic front can also be applied to the expatriate front.

From now on, Wang continued, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should stop their competition in dealing with expatriate affairs.

“Wang's statements mark the latest expression of China's attitude toward expatriate affairs,” Chang said, adding that his remarks also symbolize Beijing's positive response to President Ma Ying-jeou's recent appeal for a truce between Taiwanese and Chinese expatriate groups.

Noting that Taiwan has benefited from the cross-strait diplomatic truce over the past year, Chang said the two sides of the strait should expand this conciliatory approach to the expatriate front.

Taiwan and China once engaged in a diplomatic tug-of-war in which both sides often spent huge amounts of their national resources to lure diplomatic allies. Since Ma assumed office in May 2008, he has advocated a “modus vivendi” diplomatic strategy to pave the way for a cross-strait diplomatic truce.

“This kind of detente should be extended to expatriate communities around the world,” Chang said, adding that the goodwill strategy would spare overseas people of Chinese descent from taking sides and could instead promote exchanges and harmony between expatriate groups, as well as cross-strait peace.

Acknowledging that the decades-old cross-strait confrontation on the expatriate front has a very complex background, Chang said he believes the hostility can be gradually resolved in a pragmatic manner.

“Both sides could start by shelving disputes and forging mutual trust, gradually working more and more closely together to sort out measures for peaceful co-existence,” Chang said, adding that such a truce would help create a win-win situation for both sides.

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