Taiwan’s president-elect willing to dicusss "one China policy"

Chen made the remark while meeting with Chang Jung-fa, Chen’s new cabinet adviser and owner of the Evergreen Marine Group. After winning the election on Saturday, Chen said he and his vice-president Lu Hsiu-lien were willing to take a ‘reconciliation and communication trip’ to China before he is sworn in on May 20.

But China’s Taiwan experts sniffed at his offer, saying Beijing needs to observe him for a long time – particularly what he says about the ‘one China policy’ in his inauguration speech – before making a judgement on him.

Beijing insists there is one China and Taiwan is a Chinese province.

Taiwan, seat of the exiled Chinese nationalist government since 1949, claims China’s situation is like that of the former East and West German states as well as North and South Korea – a nation divided by civil war.

At a meeting in Hong Kong in 1992, Beijing and Taipei negotiators agreed that each side could keep its own interpretation of what is one China. So while Beijing claims there is one China and Taiwan is part of China, Taipei says while there is a historically and culturally one China, it is a divided country ruled by two governments.

This consensus was broken in July 1999 when President Lee Teng-hui reefined Taiwan-China ties as "state-to-state relationship." Beijing halted resuming bilateral talks and threatened to use force to recover Taiwan if Lee took concrete action to seek independence.

After Taiwan’s presidential election Beijing said cross-strait tension will not ease unless Taipei turns to the ‘one China policy.’

In related news, Taiwan’s defence ministry dismissed a Hong Kong press report that Chinese troops are amassing along the Fujian coast. "We have not detected unusual troop movements on the mainland. There are only regular troop movements," the ministry said.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said on Monday that large numbers of Chinese warplanes were seen flying towards the southeast coast after Taiwan’s presidential election on Saturday. A witness was quoted by the paper as saying he saw about 100 Delta-wing warplanes flying from Guangdong towards Fujian province on Sunday afternoon.