Want China Times
Editorial
Date: 2015-05-20
The head of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping, called for discussion
Xi Jinping meets Eric Chu meet at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, May 4. (File photo/CNS)
about the establishment of a framework to maintain peaceful development across the Taiwan Strait during his meeting with Eric Chu, chair of Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang, in Beijing on May 4.
The proposed framework amounts to a peace agreement, an idea which was formally brought up by Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao in 2007.
There has been no progress toward negotiating such an agreement over the past eight years and the political climate in Taiwan suggests the goal would be difficult to achieve even in twice that amount of time.
In an article published before the meeting between the heads of the ruling parties on either side of the Taiwan Strait, Zhu Weidong, deputy director of the Taiwan Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, predicted that the two sides will remain at a basic stage of peaceful development for the next 10 years or more. Zhu argued that Beijing needs to further improve the emotional bond across the strait and build support in Taiwan for a peace agreement through pushing economic cooperation. [FULL STORY]
