China threatens Taiwan with further trade sanctions as elections approach

Taiwan could face further trade sanctions from Beijing if the ruling party on the island maintained a pro-independence stance, the Chinese government warned on Wednesday. Chen Binhua, a spokesman for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, blamed President Tsai Ing-wen’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for recent cross-strait trade tensions.

“Currently Taiwan is facing a crossroads. As long as we adhere to the ‘1992 Consensus’ and oppose so-called ‘Taiwan independence,’ cross-straits relations can return to the right track of peaceful development, cross-straits consultations and negotiations can resume, and everything can be discussed,” Mr Chen said.

“We sincerely hope that compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Straits will join hands to safeguard stability across the straits, promote the peaceful development of cross-straits relations, and create a new era of prosperity and development.”

Taiwan will elect a new president and a new parliament next month, and polls show the DPP’s candidate, vice-president Lai Ching-te, as the favourite to succeed Ms Tsai Ing-wen. The DPP rejects the 1992 Consensus, an agreement between Beijing and Taipei that there is only one China but that each side can interpret it in their own way.

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The 1992 Consensus was negotiated by representatives of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) which is now Taiwan’s main opposition party. The KMT’s presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, trails Mr Lai by about five points in the polls, with Ko Wen-je from the smaller Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in third place.

Beijing last week suspended tariff reductions on 12 products from Taiwan, saying that Taipei had breached a trade agreement by placing barriers on the import of some goods from mainland China. Mr Chen said on Wednesday that the DPP’s attitude “is the root cause of the difficulty in resolving issues related to the cross-strait Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement”. He said that the Taiwan Affairs Office would support further trade measures against Taiwan if the DPP pursued a pro-independence stance.

Mr Lai has said he will not declare independence if he is elected president because Taiwan is already sovereign and a formal declaration is not necessary. He accused Beijing of interfering in next month’s elections by making Wednesday’s announcement while the opposition KMT’s vice-chairman Andrew Hsia Li-yan is visiting the Chinese mainland. Mr Chen dismissed the accusation of interference as groundless.

Taiwan has been self-governing since the leaders of the nationalist KMT fled there from the mainland in 1949 following their defeat in a civil war by the Communists under Mao Zedong. Beijing sees the island, which was under martial law until 1987, as a part of its territory that must be reunited.

During a commemoration of the 130th anniversary of Mao’s birth in Beijing this week, Xi Jinping reaffirmed Beijing’s determination to unify Taiwan with the mainland. “The complete reunification of our motherland is an overall trend, a righteous cause, and the common aspiration of the people. Our motherland must be reunified, and it will surely be reunified.”

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