KMT's Wu leads delegation to China forum

Members of the delegation include opposition People First Party Secretary-General Chin Ching-sheng, opposition New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming and non-partisan Solidarity Union Chairman Lin Pin-kuan.

Worth mentioning is that Fan Cheng-chung, former chairman of the Cabinet-level Council of Agriculture under the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, and Hsu Jung-shu, a former DPP lawmaker, also departed for Changsha to attend the forum, in defiance of threats of disciplinary action from the DPP, which insists that the forum is between the KMT and the CCP and that its members should therefore not attend.

Before the departure, Fang, who is now a national policy advisor to President Ma ying-jeou, said many people in Taiwan have criticized the ruling KMT for having “sold Taiwan out” by increasing engagements with Beijing.

“I want to take a look there (China) to find out whether the KMT has indeed sold Taiwan out,” Fan said.

Facing criticism and a warning issued by the DPP authorities, who threatened the day before to discipline Fan and Hsu if they went ahead with their plan to attend the forum, Fan said Taiwan will not be annexed by China simply because he and Hsu attend a forum.

Hsu noted that the forum is set to tackle a wide range of topics, including economic and cultural issues, making it an excellent platform for opinion exchanges between Taiwan and China, and said she did not believe the DPP leadership would act on its threat of disciplinary action.

Also yesterday, Vice Chairman Chao Chien-ming of the Mainland Affairs Council said that the cross-strait forum on economic and cultural exchanges should be regarded as a party-to-party forum, and can hardly affect policy decision-making by the government.

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