Progress with be made at cross-strait leaders meeting: experts

Want China Times, Lan Hsiao-wei and Staff Reporter 2014-06-26

Zhang Zhijun, left, shakes hands with Wang Yu-chi after arriving
in Taiwan on a four-day tour, June 26. (Photo/Yao Chih-ping)

The upcoming meeting between Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) chief Wang Yu-chi and China's Taiwan Affairs Office head Zhang Zhijun is poised to enhance both countries' mutual trust, and is an opportunity for the two sides to recognize each other's sovereignty, reports our Chinese-language sister paper China Times.

Zhang, China's top cross-strait negotiator, arrived in Taiwan on June 25, and will meet with his Taiwanese counterpart Wang during his unprecedented four-day trip, as well as New Taipei city mayor Eric Chu, a member of the ruling KMT, and Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu, a member of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Zhang Nienchi, an academic of Shanghai Institute for East Asian Studies, said that Wang and Zhang will establish an even better basis to solve political problems between the two sides. They will also pay more attention to the use of the "Republic of China (ROC)" to refer to Taiwan, Zhang said. He added that the TAO head is the first Chinese politican to ever urge Beijing to give importance to the appellation of "Republic of China."

"Most people who fuss about the status of 'a citizen of the Republic of China' hope to have some respect before China annexes Taiwan; and that if China does not recognize the ROC, it would be like a decapitated human body, because the remains without the head would be useless. The people with such ideas might not be supporting Taiwan's independence," said Zhang Nienchi.

Zhang said he believes that issues related with the ROC's legitimacy will be harder to avoid in the future, and the upcoming meeting between the two top negotiators will force China to face the reality on Taiwan's status.

Meanwhile, Yang Lixian, a deputy secretary-general of the Beijing-based National Society of Taiwan Studies, said that Taiwan's political status is not something that either the Communist Party of China, the KMT or the DPP can clearly define; this is also what causes the lack of mutual trust across the Taiwan Strait. Without such mutual trust, it would be impossible to have any kind of military mutual trust or a peace treaty.

Yang said Beijing feels uncomfortable with the "equal political entity" concept that the KMT government proposed in 1991 because it failed to depict China the way it was pictured in the international world.

Yang said it is normal and obvious that Taiwanese people decide on their own fate, but the differences in both countries' ideology, political system and power are too big as to make Taiwanese people fear about China. "The fairest way would be to decide that neither Taipei nor Beijing should have the right to change the situation in each other's respective country," said Yang.

Zhang Zhijun, chief of Chinese mainland's  Taiwan affairs, talks with

people from Atayal tribe in Taiwan (China Xinhua News)

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