New president calls for Taipei and Beijing to “set aside the baggage of history” in her inaugural address.
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Tsai, who heads the Democratic Progressive Party that is considered to be at least nominally against reunification, also referred to trade ties and said her administration will attempt to move away from over dependence on one economy.
Beijing has stepped up political pressure in recent weeks, insisting on claiming dozens of Taiwan passport-holders as its own citizens when they faced deportation as criminal suspects.
Tsai “was ambiguous on the fundamental issue of the nature of cross-Straits relations, an issue that is of utmost concern to people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits”, the authority said in the statement.
Taiwan has been separately governed since 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island after his Nationalist forces lost China’s civil war to Mao’s Communists.
On the essential question of whether she will explicitly adhere to the political foundation of peaceful development of cross-Strait relations, her answer sheet was “incomplete”, said the commentary.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has said the issue of unification can not be put off indefinitely and China’s military has conducted saber-rattling war games in recent days along the coastline facing Taiwan.
However, without mentioning China by name, she said Taiwan needed to end its dependency on the mainland for trade, “to bid farewell to our past reliance on a single market”.
Most Taiwan scholars and politicians said Tsai’s speech was full of good will, given that she not only pledged to abide by the constitution of the Republic of China – Taiwan’s official title, which contains the one-China concept, but also the Act Governing Relations Between People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area.
The American Institute in Taiwan, Washington’s de facto embassy on the island, congratulated Tsai on her inauguration, saying it “marks another milestone in the development of Taiwan’s vibrant democracy”.
The mainland’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation meet in Hong Kong and agree on the 1992 Consensus.
Tsai was elected after strongly opposing the Beijing-friendly policy of outgoing President Ma Ying-jeou.
China’s state media did not cover Ms. Tsai’s inauguration on national television or in major newspapers such as the People’s Daily.
This was seen as not only recognising the status of His Majesty as King but also presenting a profound statement on the status of the 48-year relationship between the Kingdom of Swaziland and the Republic of China, Taiwan.
Police in Taipei stand guard at Tsai’s inauguration. The growth rate of the island nation’s economy is less than one percent. But the bill has already been criticized by Taiwanese business groups and Taiwan-watchers in Beijing.
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Taiwan is located close to Okinawa and the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and maintains effective control over the largest natural island in the disputed Spratly island chain in the South China Sea.
