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Taiwan's anti-annexation law a separatist move
Li Weiyi, a spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office under the State Council, or China's cabinet, reaffirmed at a regular press conference that there is only one China in the world, and the mainland and Taiwan belong to this one China. China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and the one China status quo are not allowed to be altered, he underscored. The anti-secession law, which China's top legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC), is enacting, aims at fighting and curbing any secessionist attempts in Taiwan, Li said. Li went on to say that "we will adhere to the basic principles of 'peaceful reunification' and 'one country, two systems,' and continue to pursue a peaceful reunification with our utmost sincerity and efforts." "But we will never tolerate 'Taiwan independence' activities and will never
allow anyone to separate Taiwan from China by any means," the spokesman said.
He said the situation of cross-Straits relations remained severe though non-governmental exchanges had kept developing last year. Last year, the Taiwan authorities further intensified their efforts for "Taiwan independence" activities. "The Taiwan authorities twisted the will of the Taiwan people, incited the hostile sentiment among the people to the mainland, did their utmost to challenge the fact that the mainland and Taiwan belong to one China, and continued to carry forward 'Taiwan independence' activities by pushing ahead the so-called 'Constitutional reform', which had brought the cross-Straits relationship to a dangerous edge," Li said. The provocative moves of the Taiwan authorities for "Taiwan independence" posed a severe threat to peace and stability across the Straits and in the Asia-Pacific region as a whole, aroused resolute opposition among the 1.3 billion Chinese people and Taiwan compatriots, and were strongly blamed by an increasing number of countries all over the world, said the spokesman. Currently the situation of the cross-Straits relationship remained severe, he said. Chen Shui-bian formulated a new term of "Constitutional reform" to replace the former term of "establishing a new Taiwan Constitution" and promised that the "Constitutional reform" would not touch upon the issues of territory, sovereignty and reunification after he started his second tenure last May, but in fact he had been attempting to legitimatize "Taiwan independence" through "Constitutional reform". Since last September, especially during the election of the "legislation council", Chen announced a series of "Taiwan independence" ideas, covering almost all the major aspects for changing Taiwan's status. He had been making preparations for "Taiwan independence" in a planned way and step by step through his attempt to revise the law on "referendum" and step up "rectification of Taiwan's name" and "desinification" in political,cultural and other areas. Li stressed that currently it is the urgent task for the compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Straits to stop "Taiwan Independence" activities and safeguard peace and stability across the Straits. "This year, we will stick to the basic principles of 'peaceful reunification' and 'one country, two systems', as well as the eight-point proposal on promoting the development of the cross-Straits relations, and continue to pursue peaceful reunification with our utmost sincerity and efforts," said Li. The spokesman said the mainland will continue to promote economic and cultural exchanges across the Straits and push forward the process of the three "direct links" so as to realize the resumption of cross-Straits dialogue and negotiation on the basis of the one-China principle at an early date. "But we will never allow anyone to separate Taiwan from China in any name and by any means," Li said. The year 2004 also witnessed continuous development of various non-governmental exchanges and communications across the Straits, and new progress was made in cross-Straits personnel, economic andcultural exchanges, Li added. Last year, he said, the mainland received 3.686 million visitors from Taiwan, a year-on-year increase of 34.9 percent; andmainland residents paid 145,000 visits to Taiwan, up 14.2 percent. Customs statistics also showed that in 2004 the indirect trade volume across the Taiwan Straits for the first time exceeded 70 billion US dollars, up 34.2 percent over 2003, while the contractual investment in the mainland by Taiwan business people totaled 9.306 billion dollars, up 8.74 percent, Li added. Charter flights does not mean resumption of cross-Straits talks Li said that the successful arrangement for charter flights during the coming Spring Festival did not mean the resumption of talks cross the Taiwan Straits. The arrangement was only a practical one to meet the needs of Taiwan business people who work in the Chinese mainland and want to spend the festival at home, according to Li. There was no ready-made model to follow during the future festivals, he added. "We will consider some practical arrangements in line with the interests of the people cross the Taiwan Straits," Li said. It depended on the demand of Taiwan compatriots whether similar charter flights would be launched in future traditional festivals or whether the mainland would promote charter freight flights across the Straits, he said. He stressed that the charter flights were designed only to facilitate Taiwan compatriots to go back home for the Spring Festival. The mainland and Taiwan civil aviation professionals reached a consensus earlier this month on launching non-stop charter flights across the Straits for Taiwan business people working on the mainland to return home for the Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year. Each side will have six airlines to operate 24 non-stop round- trip flights over Hong Kong, beginning this weekend. In 2003, Taiwanese civil aviation airplanes were for the first time since 1949 allowed to fly to the mainland. However, due to restrictions from the Taiwan authorities, the flights had to make stopovers in Hong Kong or Macao on their way to Shanghai or returning trips, and no airlines from the mainland were involved. |
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