Taiwan opposition party DPP to block reciprocal offices with China
Main opposition party says it will reject draft legislation that would allow semi-official bodies to open branches in Taiwan and on mainland
Taiwan's main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has pledged to stop Beijing-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou from allowing cross-strait semi-official organisations to set up reciprocal branch offices.
Joseph Wu Jau-shieh, executive director of the DPP's Policy Research Committee, said on Wednesday his party would propose a resolution rejecting draft legislation that would enable the mainland's semi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (Arats) to open a branch office in Taiwan. Arats' counterpart in Taipei, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), also wants to open a mainland office.
The island's ruling Kuomintang said yesterday - after a summit between President Xi Jinping , in the capacity of Communist Party chief, and KMT honorary chairman Wu Poh-hsiung - that it would negotiate with opposition parties to remove the political barriers to establishing reciprocal offices.
"It is just like when we promoted the Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement [ECFA]. We faced many difficulties in Taiwan, and the opposition parties boycotted it in a high-profile manner. But in the end we overcame the difficulties and signed the agreement, " the Kuomintang's statement said. The EFCA was signed in 2010.
But Joseph Wu was quoted by the pro-independence Liberal Times yesterday as saying: "The DPP is worried about … whether the [Arats] branch in Taipei would play the same role as the central government's liaison office in Hong Kong, which would mean that Taiwan recognises that it is part of [the People's Republic of] China."
He was also quoted as saying that Ma's political stance on cross-strait affairs - that of "one Republic of China, two areas" - did not reflect the status quo in Taiwan, and that it would bring "permanent harm" to the island's future development in the international community. "For [Taiwan's] political positioning, the DPP believes that there is no grey area, because there's no way to accept the Hong Kong model," he said.