Update | Beijing expresses dissatisfaction after Taiwan’s new President Tsai Ing-wen swaps ‘consensus’ for ‘historic fact’
Island’s new leader must take concrete action to prove her sincerity to keep cross-strait ties stable, says mainland China’s Taiwan Affairs Office
The mainland’s top agency dealing with Taiwan affairs has expressed dissatisfaction with the inaugural speech of the island’s new president, Tsai Ing-wen, after she shunned mention of the term “1992 consensus”.
The Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council demanded that Tsai – the island’s first woman president who was sworn in yesterday morning – take appropriate steps to prove her sincerity in maintaining cross-strait relations.
“Tsai made no concrete proposal for ensuring the peaceful and stable growth of cross-strait relations,” the office said in a statement. “This [her speech] is an incomplete test answer ... The Taiwan authorities must give an explicit answer with concrete actions to all these major questions and face the test of history.”
The Communist Party’s official People’s Daily said in a commentary that the mainland’s stance on sovereignty had not changed, and that the anti-secession law passed by the National People’s Congress in 2005 was still an effective legal tool to contain Taiwanese independence.
In her inaugural speech, Tsai avoided explicitly mentioning the word “consensus”, saying instead that she respected the “historic fact” that a meeting took place in 1992, during which Taiwan and the mainland sought common ground and tried to set aside their differences.