Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen smiles at the crowd on Friday during her inauguration in Taipei, Taiwan.
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The comments came a day after Beijing-sceptic Tsai’s inauguration speech, where she called for “positive dialogue” with the Chinese mainland, but stopped short of any compromise on Beijing’s demands that she back its “one China” principle.
Ms Tsai, 59, swore the presidential oath in front of the national flag, before being presented with the official seal.
The MAC noted that President Tsai had already stressed that she will staunchly maintain cross-strait peace based on the existing political foundation, and that she will handle Taiwan-China matters according to the R.O.C. Constitution and the law governing relations across the Strait.
“She did not explicitly recognize the 1992 Consensus and its core implications”, the statement said, “and made no concrete proposal for ensuring the peaceful and stable growth of cross-Strait relations”.
Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory and has threatened to invade the island if it formally breaks from the mainland.
The two have been bitter rivals since the civil war ended in 1949, though relations eased under Taiwan’s former Kuomintang government.
Tsai Ing-wen’s inauguration is making headlines in Taiwanese and Hong Kong papers. She also said she would push for Taiwan to join trade blocs, including the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. She has promised to bolster social programs, reform the rigid educational system and increase opportunities for women and minorities, all while attempting to reinvigorate the economy and create jobs for educated young people. However, she added that Taiwan’s democratic system and the will of its 23 million people must be respected in the course of cross-strait dialogue.
While she showed no sign of backing down from that stance in her speech, Tsai emphasised the importance of communication.
Tsai was elected after strongly opposing the Beijing-friendly policy of outgoing President Ma Ying-jeou. The polls, which also gave the DPP its first parliamentary majority, were also seen as an expression of concern that the island’s economy is under threat from the Chinese mainland’s economic juggernaut.
After Tsai’s election, China established formal diplomatic ties with the small African nation of Gambia, which had severed ties with Taiwan in 2013, ending an undeclared diplomatic truce between the sides that lasted nearly eight years. Her win has brought the Democratic Progressive Party, which has always favoured independence from mainland China, to power.
The main sticking point now is a consensus agreed to in 1992 that saw China and a Nationalist Party-led Taiwanese government agree they belong to the “One China”.
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But Xinhua said in a commentary on Saturday that Beijing wanted her to clearly state she adheres to the consensus – rather than be “ambiguous and evasive”.
