Beijing – Chinese officials said Tuesday that Taiwan’s ruling party must scrap its party platform and stop its “separatist activities” before Beijing will talk with President Chen Shui-bian, dashing hopes that the recent thaw in cross-strait relations would lead to negotiations soon.
The conditions, spelled out by the deputy head of the Communist Party’s Taiwan affairs office, Wang Zaixi, may signal that China is content for now to talk with Taiwan’s opposition parties, which favor closer ties with the mainland, while isolating Chen’s ruling party.
If that position holds, it could jeopardize Chen politically. He has struggled to develop his own strategy for communicating with Beijing in light of the enormous publicity generated by the chairman of the opposition Nationalist Party, Lien Chan, in his eight-day visit to the mainland, which ended Tuesday.
The United States, Taiwan’s sole major ally, has urged Beijing to open talks with Chen.
The State Department has argued that government-to-government dialogue is the only way to reduce cross-strait tensions and any threat of armed conflict, which could involve American forces.
Last week, Hu Jintao, the leader of China’s Communist Party, held talks with Lien, the first meeting between a Communist and Nationalist leader in nearly 60 years.
Lien’s visit was the highest- level exchange between Taiwanese and mainland politicians since the Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war. The high-profile meeting between Lien and Hu on Friday, televised live in China and Taiwan, fueled hopes that a broader rapprochement might be in the offing.