Taipei Times
Date: Sep 02, 2016
By: Chen Yu-fu, Lin Liang-sheng, Yang Chun-hui and Jonatha / Staff reporters, with staff writer
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) yesterday said that Beijing would not
Straits Exchange Foundation chairman Tien Hung-mao is pictured in an undated photograph. Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
resume regular communications with Taipei, despite the appointment of former minister of foreign affairs Tien Hung-mao (田弘茂) as chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF).
The Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) — the foundation’s counterpart — will not resume regular dialogue with the SEF until the “local authority” recognizes the so-called “1992 consensus,” Zhang said at a news conference after a cross-strait economic forum in Shandong Province.
The “1992 consensus,” a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) admitted to making up in 2000, refers to a tacit understanding between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese government that both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledge that there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
“The key to the problem is the political basis, the political basis of the negotiation being authorized, not the individuals involved,” Zhang said.
According to a source close to the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media, former legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) was offered the chairmanship first, but after a lengthy period of discussion Wang declined the position, prompting the administration to name Tien. [FULL STORY]
