By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Former premier Frank Hsieh’s (謝長廷) office said yesterday that Hsieh’s plan to organize a cross-strait forum next year was still in the “primitive stages.”
The Chinese-language China Review New Web site yesterday reported that Hsieh’s Taiwan Reform Foundation would organize a forum for academics across the Taiwan Strait in March next year and that he would visit China again in April.
The forum would discuss substantial cross-strait policies rather than the political status of Taiwan and China, the report said.
Office director Lin Yao-wen (林耀文) said the foundation did not rule out holding a seminar on cross-strait relations, but there was “no detailed planning yet, nor was there any decision being made on the location, dates and agenda of the forum.”
Hsieh, who became the first high-ranking DPP politician to visit China with a trip to Xiamen and Beijing in October, is currently on a private trip to the US and was not available for comment.
The visit stirred up intense internal debate within the DPP on the party’s engagement with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The party’s liberal wing has pushed for an active engagement with the CCP, while the conservatives have called for a more cautious approach.
The DPP has reiterated that it does not oppose closer engagement with Beijing and had sent party officials to a number of recent cross-strait forums in Taiwan that were attended by Chinese officials and academics.