Taiwan knocks new China law

The Taiwanese Government has made an appeal to the international community to challenge what it calls the People’s Republic of China’s false hegemony behaviour of “saying one thing and doing another”, and to take concrete actions to assist in safeguarding the present peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.{{more}}

The statement, issued Tuesday 8 by the local Embassy of the Republic of Taiwan, comes in response to the PRC passing the “Anti-Separation Law”, a piece of legislation which threatens to attack Taiwan, mainland China’s island neighbour if it attempts to declare independence.

Though they have been ruled by separate governments since the end of Chinese civil war in 1949, the government of mainland China considers Taiwan as part of its territory. The PRC has offered a “one country, two systems” solution, as exists with the former British colony, Hong Kong, but this is being resisted by the government of Taiwan.

As reiterated in this week’s statement, the Taiwanese insist that “the Republic of China (Taiwan) is a sovereign nation and both sides of the Strait have no jurisdiction over one another.” It emphasizes that the Taiwanese people cannot accept [the] PRC’s “one country, two systems” arrangement and says “the future of Taiwan requires the consensus of the twenty-three million Taiwanese people and the PRC authority must accept this fact.”

The Taiwanese Embassy said that this law exposes PRC’s intent to use military force to annex Taiwan and dominate the region and “has essentially written a blank cheque for its military to resort to military force against Taiwan.”

The Taiwanese Government says it “offers the strongest protest regarding the disruption of peace in the East Asian region and stability in the Taiwan Strait, ignoring of the Taiwanese people’s will and encroachment of the Taiwanese people’s freedom of choice through ill intentions and violent measures.”

The statement said that in the past five years, the Taiwanese Government has made many efforts to improve cross-strait relations. It said concrete suggestions of constructing cross-strait peace and stability have been proposed in cross-strait exchanges and dialogues, “yet the PRC authority completely dismiss the Taiwanese Government’s continuous efforts in improving cross-strait relations by formulating this law and creating barriers against further cross-strait exchanges and resumption of dialogues.”