By Chris Wang / Staff Reporter
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday jostled over the so-called “1992 consensus,” with the KMT stressing the consensus does exist, while the DPP contended otherwise.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday said the consensus — which the KMT says means “one China, with each side having its own interpretation” — has been the basis of the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and that it would not disappear simply because DPP Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) denies its existence.
Meanwhile, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) displayed two letters between the foundation and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, as proof that the consensus exists.
Both sides wrote that they hoped to “resume exchanges and negotiation as soon as possible on the basis of the 1992 consensus.”
In response, DPP spokesman Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said the letters were dated May 26, 2008, a week after President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) assumed office.
Citing the autobiography of late SEF chairman Koo Chen-foo (辜振甫), who participated in the negotiations in 1992, the DPP said Koo wrote that no consensus was reached in the 1992 meeting. It was former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) who first coined the phrase on April 28, 2000, wrote Koo, who died in 2005.
Almost everyone involved in the meeting in 1992, including Koo and former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), has denied the existence of such a consensus, Chen added, urging Beijing and the KMT to spend time studying Tsai’s China policy instead of dwelling on a phrase which “has not been helpful to cross-strait relations.”