As Beijing stepped up its pressure on Taiwan yesterday to begin talks for unification, a leader of the ruling Nationalist Party in Taipei told The Irish Times he could see no prospects of unity negotiations at the present time because Communist China's terms were "unacceptable".
"With our fundamental position and their fundamental position I don't see any common ground," Dr Yu-ming Shaw, deputy secretary-general of the Nationalist Party (KMT), said in an interview at party headquarters in the Taiwan capital. "If they carry out both the letter and the spirit of this White Paper I don't see any possibility of any breakthrough."
In a White Paper on Monday, Beijing warned Taiwan, which it regards as a breakaway province, that China would be forced to use "drastic measures, including military force", if it indefinitely delayed negotiations aimed at reuniting with the mainland.
China has previously threatened military action if Taiwan either proclaimed independence, or was invaded by a foreign power, or suffered internal chaos, and this is the first time it has explicitly threatened to attack the island if it continued to reject unification on Beijing's terms.
In Beijing yesterday, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr Zhu Bangzao, followed up Monday's White Paper with a warning that the issue could not be postponed indefinitely. "After the return of Hong Kong, Macau has also returned smoothly to the embrace of the motherland," he told reporters. "It is natural for us to have a sense of urgency in resolving the Taiwan issue."
The first casualty of Beijing's renewed threat of invasion was Taiwan's stock market, which at one stage yesterday fell 3.2 per cent, dragging Hong Kong and other Asian shares down with it.
No one in Taipei seemed in any doubt that Beijing's tough new policy was designed to influence the March 18th presidential election, in which three candidates are neck and neck in a race to succeed President Lee Tenghui of Taiwan and there was no feeling of public alarm in the rain-swept streets.
Analysts said that the heightened tension would most hurt Mr Chen Shui-bian, the candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which supports an independent Taiwan, as voters would not want instability in China relations.
Mr James Soong, who broke from the KMT to run as an independent, is seen as Beijing's favoured candidate and could gain from China's intervention, but he sought to capitalise on the widespread indignation in Taiwan. "We won't be intimidated," Mr Soong said. "The Taiwan people are not afraid to negotiate but they will not agree to negotiate out of fear."
The Nationalists' vice-presidential candidate, the Prime Minister, Mr Vincent Siew, sought to turn Beijing's warning to advantage at a campaign rally yesterday. "Taiwan needs stability. It can't have instability," he said. "We need peace, not war. We should vote for candidates who can deliver peace and stability."
Dr Yu-Ming said that Beijing's definition of the one-China principle was unacceptable to Taiwan as it referred only to the People's Republic of China. Taiwan also could not accept the one-country, two-systems formula under which Hong Kong and Macau returned to the mainland, as Taiwan was not a former colony and could not give up "functioning and living as a sovereign state".
China wanted to set the rules, he said, and the parameters of these were one China, one country, two systems, and the indivisibility of Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity. "I think they are afraid if they don't lay down these rules, one of the presidential candidates may promise something beyond their scope. In the past the three `No's' were: no Russian card; no nuclear weapons and no internal fratricide. This time the three `No's' are: no independence, no foreign invasion of Taiwan, and no indefinite procrastination or refusal to come to the conference table to negotiate for reunification."
The KMT official added that Beijing would probably prefer if his party's candidate, Vice-President Lien Chan of Taiwan, were elected, as he would carry the authority of a political machine rather than an individual into any future dialogue.