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How true is Ma’s claim that DPP ‘isolated’ Taiwan?
By Ken
Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2011-10-12 06:36 PM
Recently President Ma Ying-jeou and the KMT have sharply criticized the DPP and the two administrations of Chen Shui-bian for ‘isolating Taiwan’ while they were in office. Yet official announcements in the mainland Chinese media would seem to indicate that the mainland does not necessarily agree with the KMT’s way of thinking.
The People’s Daily, one of the three main mouthpieces of the mainland Chinese government along with Xinhua News Agency and CCTV, said recently that relations between Taiwan and China had improved greatly ‘over the past seven years’, a period which would include the three years of the Ma administration but would also include the second of the two Chen terms.
It cannot be denied that the Ma administration has a lot to show for its efforts to improve cross-strait relations. The cross-strait relations agencies on both sides met 15 times after Ma took office and ECFA was signed last year, both great strides forward in improving economic, trade and inter-personal relations between Taiwan and China.
But it should also be remembered that after Chen and the DPP were put into power in 2001 they also took steps toward opening up relations across the strait.
The share of overseas investment by Taiwanese going to mainland China increased from 27.7% in 1999 to 71.1% in 2005, and the number of Taiwanese living and working in China increased by more than a million during the 8 years of the Chen administration. A conference held in 2006 called for loosening of the 40% limit on investments by Taiwanese in mainland companies, for the establishment of banking facilities across the strait and for foreign currency exchange of the RMB. These were all significant steps forward in the opening up of relations between Taiwan and mainland China.
So how can this rightly be called ‘isolating Taiwan’?
source: http://www.taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_content.php?id=1733530
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