China’s reunification of Taiwan: are Taipei and Beijing locked in a zero-sum game?
- Speeches by Xi Jinping and Tsai Ing-wen show they are poles apart on key issues
- Taipei rejects ‘one country, two systems’ model, which Beijing sees as linchpin for reunification
Taiwan on Wednesday flatly rejected calls by Chinese President Xi Jinping for the two sides to adopt the “one country, two systems” model to resolve their conflicts, which analysts said was clear evidence of the zero-sum game the two leaders were now playing.
In a speech given earlier in the day to mark the 40th anniversary of Beijing’s call to end military confrontation across the Taiwan Strait, Xi said the two sides should begin talks on reunification as a way to settle 70 years of differences.
But Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen was quick to show her disdain for the idea.
“As president of the Republic of China [Taiwan’s official title], … I must solemnly point out that we have never accepted the ‘1992 consensus’ out of the concern that the so-called consensus defined by Beijing authorities only means ‘one China’ and ‘one country, two systems,’” she said.
“What [Xi] said today has verified our concerns, and I must reiterate here that Taiwan will never accept ‘one country, two systems’, and the majority opinion in Taiwan is also against it,” she told a news conference held just hours after Xi’s speech.
She said that Taiwan was willing to talk with Beijing, but only as a democratic government, and that any political negotiations across the strait must be authorised and supervised by the legislature and conducted under the government-to-government model.