Lien calls for peace, ‘win-win’ future for China

Lien Chan, chairman of the Kuomintang, appealed for peace and a mutually prosperous future for Taiwan and China at Beijing yesterday.

In a half-hour speech before students of Peking University, the Kuomintang leader laid down the theme for his scheduled talks with President Hu Jintao later in the afternoon, stressing that is the task to which all the Chinese people should dedicate themselves.

“What we all should dedicate ourselves to,” Lien told a packed university auditorium, “is to maintain peace and move toward a win-win future.”

Reviewing the history of relations between Taiwan and China over the past five decades and a half, Lien pointed to Chiang Ching-kuo and Deng Xiaoping as two leaders who made right decisions at the right time.

Chiang initiated Taiwan’s democratization. Under his leadership, Taiwan wrought the economic miracle of the 20th century. He started contact between Taiwan and China after nearly four decades of total separation.

Deng ended the Cultural Revolution and opened up China, paving the way for its peaceful rise as a world power.

“Without a doubt, Mr.(Deng) Xiaoping was the prime mover behind the rapid economic development that ... has greatly raised the standard of living of the people on the mainland of China,” said Lien, who was disrupted by a long applause from the audience.

On the other hand, Lien went on, President Chiang was worried about the common future of Taiwan and China. “He told us, he is a Chinese and a Taiwanese as well,” Lien said of the president, who died in Taipei in 1988. That proves Chiang wanted Taiwan and China should share a common future.

That future, Lien pointed out, is one mutually prosperous for the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. To reach that future, the Kuomintang chairman said, China has to narrow the gap it has with Taiwan in democratic reform.

Lien said people were wrong in characterizing his visit to China as one of fence-mending aimed at the third cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party.

“These people,” the Kuomintang leader pointed out, “are still thinking in the frame of mind that belongs to the last century.

“My visit is a result of a totally different approach. I want to begin mine with goodwill, with mutual trust and mutual understanding, with the well-being of all the people in mind, and with the benefit of the entire Chinese nation as the purpose I want to achieve.

“Let the two sides of the Strait march on together on the way toward a mutually prosperous win-win future. “Let no more gunfire be heard across the Taiwan Strait.

“Let no one on either side of the Strait shed any more blood.

“That is my aspiration. That, I believe, is also the common aspiration of all the 23 million people on Taiwan and all the 13 billion people on the mainland.”

History, Lien added, will give his visit a rightful assessment, “because we are complying with the will of the people, working for the people on both sides of the Strait, trying to break through the stalemate, removing the confrontation, and starting dialogue to build a bridge across the Strait for peace.”

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He explained to the students how the Kuomintang opposed the de-Sinicization of Taiwan and won the legislative elections at the end of last year.

“We made it perfectly clear that we oppose narrow nationalism replacing democracy; that we oppose what is known as ‘creation of a new constitution’ and ‘rectification of the name of Taiwan’; that we oppose a ‘timetable for Taiwan independence,” Lien said.

The Kuomintang made it clear, too, that there should be no more confrontation or collision between the two sides of the Strait, Lien added.

“And we won the parliamentary majority,” the Kuomintang leader pointed out.

In the common future of Taiwan and China, Lien said, both sides should strive for “social multipolarity and tolerance,” “mutual assistance and benefit” and “stability and peace.”

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