TAO & MAC Fire Salvos over 1992 Consensus

 TAO & MAC Fire Salvos over 1992 Consensus

Source: United Daily News

January 17, 2019

President Tsai Ing-wen recently pointed out that the “1992 Consensus” as defined by the Beijing authorities was actually tantamount to “one country, two systems.” Yesterday, Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光), spokesman of the Mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO，國台辦) under the State Council, rebutted by saying that the DPP exposed its “splittist” stance by denying at will the “1992 Consensus” and smearing “one country, two systems.” Ma criticized the leader of the DPP authorities for deliberately commingling the two in order to misguide people in Taiwan.

Ma pointed out that in December 1992, Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Mainland’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), after a talk in Hong Kong and exchanges of fax messages, reached a consensus that each side could interpret respectively “both sides across the Taiwan Strait adhering to the one China principle.” Ma then went on to say that from the interpretations by the two sides, we could see that adhering to the one China principle and seeking national reunification together should be the meaning of the “1992 consensus.”

In a written statement issued last evening, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) in Taipei rebutted Ma by arguing that no consensus had been reached in the 1992 talks, criticizing the TAO for confusing the public by cheating and concealing the facts for such a long time. MAC went on to say that in a commemorative event in Beijing on January 2 marking the 40th anniversary of issuing the “Message to Taiwan Compatriots,” Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CCP, had redefined the 1992 Consensus as “the two sides of the Strait belonging to one China, seeking national reunification,” and at the same time, proposed to explore a program of “one country, two systems” for Taiwan; both were for the purpose of achieving reunification. However, people in Taiwan never accepted them, the MAC indicated.

The MAC called on various circles to recognize that the essence of the 1992 Consensus as defined by the Mainland was a lethal poison for annexing the ROC (Taiwan).

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