President Ma urges China to scrap missiles

Taiwan planned to buy more weapons from the United States to protect itself, although it did not want an arms race with China as trade ties expand and with more deals expected to be signed in the coming year or so, Ma said.

“(There are) more than 1,000 (missiles) and they haven't changed that. The number continues to go up. That is certainly a great concern for the people here,” Ma told Reuters in an interview at the Presidential Office.

“If we are to negotiate a peace agreement with the mainland, certainly we expect them to do something about those missiles, either to remove them or dismantle them,” said Ma, who has eased tensions with China since taking office in May 2008.

The 59-year-old Ma, who became chairman of the ruling Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT) over the weekend, said he would not rule out meeting Chinese leaders such as his counterpart Hu Jintao.

“I won't exclude that possibility, but there's no timetable for that yet,” Ma said, when asked if he would meet Hu. “At the moment, we have our hands full with economic issues.”

Communist China has claimed Taiwan since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and has vowed to bring the island under mainland rule, by force if necessary.

Despite political differences, commercial ties have flourished. China is Taiwan's largest trading partner with two-way trade worth more than $130 billion, while Taiwanese businesses have poured over $100 billion into the mainland.

Ma said the island needed to diversify its exports to stay competitive and forecast four percent economic growth next year. He also said the island expected to sign a deal similar to a free trade agreement with China next year that would cut tariffs.

The president hopes more of the exports that go to China will be sold to the Chinese domestic market, instead of being re-exported to advanced economies such as the United States and Europe that have been harder hit by the steep global downturn.

“It's not possible for us to change the economy based on exports, but we could diversify the export market, not focusing entirely on the United States or Europe,” Ma said.

“Actually the largest export destination is mainland China, but many of the goods with mainland China are reprocessed to be re-exported to the U.S. and Europe, so we will modify that policy so that mainland China is no longer treated only as a factory, but rather, as a market.”

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