T aiwan’s new President Tsai Ing-wen called for “positive dialogue” with China but did not endorse a 1992 One-China agreement at her inauguration on Friday, potentially setting the stage for a rocky phase in relations between Beijing and Taipei.
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China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said Tsai’s remarks were an “incomplete answer”, warning that China saw any push for Taiwan independence as “the biggest menace to peace across the Taiwan Strait”, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
“Once again, the people of Taiwan have shown the world through our actions that we, as a free and democratic people, are committed to the defence of our freedom and democracy as a way of life”, Tsai said in her address after taking oath.
In her speech, which was closely watched by Beijing, Tsai, 59, who was sworn in as the island’s first female president yesterday, avoided explicitly mentioning the word “consensus”.
China and Taiwan split in 1949 after the Kuomintang nationalist forces lost a civil war to the Communists.
She said Taiwan would play a responsible role and be a “staunch guardian of peace”, which was important to build regional peace and collective security. “She’s signaled that she would largely focus on domestic issues”, Anthony Kuhn of NPR reported.
Beijing, skeptical of Tsai, wants her to publicly acknowledge the “one-China” policy.
But President Tsai Ing-wen’s call got a cool reception from China, which again warned her against seeking independence for the island. Taiwan technically isn’t an independent country, and is like an autonomous province of China.
The choice between staying on the path of peaceful growth of cross-Strait relations and repeating the past practice of provoking cross-Strait tension and instability. However, Taiwanese public opinion is strongly against any sort of political union or outright conflict between the two sides, instead favouring the status of de facto independence and robust social and economic interactions. In recent months Beijing has also obstructed Taiwan’s participation in worldwide gatherings, stepped back from cooperation on cross-border criminal investigations and hinted at economic retaliation.
The Chinese mainland remains as determined as ever and has even stronger ability to uphold national sovereignty and territorial integrity, said the mainland Taiwan Affairs authority on Friday.
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.
Tsai in her speech did not recognize the consensus outright, but gave a nod to the historical circumstances of its formation, calling on the mainland to continue dialogue developed with the outgoing Nationalist government.
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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.
