Taiwan amid row over reunification guidelines
02.26.2006, 06:15 AM

TAIPEI (AFX) - Former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage is to visit Taiwan, the foreign ministry said today amid a row over plans by the pro-independence ruling party to scrap guidelines on reunification with China.

President Chen Shui-bian has proposed to scrap the guidelines the former ruling Kuomintang party created in 1990 for eventual reunification with mainland China.

Chen's Democratic Progressive Party last week voted to endorse abolishing the guidelines which he calls 'absurd'.

China has warned that voting to scrap the guidelines could harm cross-strait stability, while Washington has reiterated that it 'does not support Taiwan's independence and opposes unilateral changes to the status quo by either Taiwan or Beijing.'

The two sides separated at the end of a civil war in 1949 but Beijing still regards the island as part of its territory to be reunited, by force if necessary.

Armitage is due to arrive March 7 at the invitation of a government-funded foundation, Taiwan foreign ministry spokesman Michel Lu said.

'The visit has nothing to do with the matter. It had been previously arranged,' Lu told Agence France-Presse.

But some analysts see a link between Chen's plan and Armitage's visit.

'The United States is trying its last-ditch effort to persuade Chen not to do it,' said Chang Lin-cheng, political science professor of National Taiwan University.

'Washington fears eliminating the guidelines could be another step of Chen's efforts to push for independence.'

In a report from Washington, the Taipei-based United Daily News said Armitage will tell Chen the possible negative impacts on regional stability if he goes ahead with his controversial proposal.

Local newspapers have said Washington's envoy Dennis Wilder, the acting National Security Council director for Asia, quietly visited Taipei over the issue earlier this month, but Chen has refused to back down.

In an apparent warning to Chen, David Keegan, acting director of the de facto US embassy here, said Thursday: 'American policy on cross-strait issues is firm and unchanging. Our strong desire is that Taiwan's policy not depart from that strong foundation (of peace)'.

'It has served us and the Taiwan people very well over the past decades,' he said here.

China also issued a warning Thursday over the plan.

'This is a dangerous sign of the escalation of activities by Taiwan separatists,' Xinhua news agency quoted Chen Yunlin, director of the mainland's cabinet-level Taiwan Affairs Office, as saying.

Chen had promised during his inauguration in 2000 to uphold the council and the guidelines and said he would not seek formal independence for the island. He renewed that promise in 2004 after he was narrowly reelected for a second and final term.

Local newspapers said Chen would not use the word "abolish" in a bid to reassure Washington that the island had no intention of unilaterally altering the status quo.

The China Times said Chen was likely to "freeze" or "suspend" the council, while the United Daily News said Chen would declare that it had "ceased to apply".

Other than those deep-green supporters, no one really trusts/likes what Chen's doing anyway.

He just compared the relationship of Taiwan and the US to a gay union.

^ What made him so popular in the first place?  JIS said was his performance as mayor.

^Ma is like Hitler?!

You people are nuts.

Taiwan will see its GDP shrink by 0.0187 percent if it fails to take measures to cushion the impact of the establishment of a free-trade zone between China and ASEAN, a private think tank warned yesterday.
The Taipei-based Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER, 台經院) said in a study that Taiwan is facing mounting challenges as China and ASEAN are pushing ahead with a program to establish a free-trade area by 2010.

Taiwan will be shunted to the sidelines or will see its competitiveness seriously undermined if it is shut out of the trade bloc, which is a likely scenario in light of the tense cross-strait relations, the think tank said.

As if that were not bad enough, the study said, Japan has followed China's footsteps in forging an all-out economic cooperation agreement with ASEAN with an eye to joining the free-trade bloc by 2012, which has prompted South Korea to consider jumping on the bandwagon.

Should a free-trade bloc covering China, Japan, South Korea and ASEAN take shape, the study predicts, Taiwanese businesspeople's investments in ASEAN states will be replaced by Chinese firms, while multinational firms that are interested in exploring the ASEAN markets are likely to set up their regional business centers in China.

The impact of this trend could be alleviated somehow if direct transportation links between Taiwan and China are established, according to the study.

Two-way trade between Taiwan and China reached US$71.7 billion last year, with Taiwan enjoying a trade surplus of US$31.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 12.6 percent, the Bureau of Foreign Trade reported on Friday. Last year, Taiwan's trade with China accounted for 19.3 percent of its entire foreign trade, up 1.3 percentage points from 2004, the bureau said.

Were direct transportation links across the Taiwan Strait to be established, the decrease in Taiwan's GDP would be 0.0135 percent, according to the TIER study.

Other measures the country could take to brace for the impact of any China ASEAN deal would be to improve its economic ties with India, Japan and South Korea and forge strategic alliances with the three countries.

I'd rather use incentive than force.

^ Like not pushing people away with force. 

More trade ties.  Make Taiwan dependent on China.  The more stake they have in China, the less they want to displease China.  It all makes sense.

If you push Taiwan, Taiwan will push back.  There are easier and more clever ways to achive unification than just smashing the island into a thousand pieces.