Taiwan News
Date: 2016-03-01
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The New Power Party used the terms “China” and “People’s Republic of China” in its proposal Tuesday for a law regulating trade talks, indicating Taiwan and China were two separate countries.

Officially, Taiwan refers to itself as the Republic of China and the PRC as Mainland China, with relations between the two usually described as cross-straits relations.

The NPP was founded by the leaders of the Sunflower Movement, which occupied the Legislative Yuan in early 2014 in a protest against the Kuomintang’s attempt to ram through an unpopular trade-in-services pact with China. One of the key demands of the movement was the passage of a special law guiding the conduct of trade talks and accords with Beijing.

The law proposal unveiled by NPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang Tuesday speaks of “two countries” holding talks and signing agreements, seeing Taiwan and China as two separate countries and not as two parts of a theoretical whole.     [FULL  STORY]