China welcomes Taiwan's Lee but not as president

China welcomes Taiwan's Lee but not as president

BEIJING (Reuter): China would welcome a visit by President Lee Teng-hui of rival Taiwan but not as president, official media yesterday quoted Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen as saying.

But Qian, who is also foreign minister, scoffed at suggestions by the Taiwan authorities that China should learn from the island's democratic reforms and economic miracle.

In his inaugural presidential address on May 20, Lee said he would like to embark on a "journey of peace" to China, which has rattled its saber at Taiwan since last June to try to dampen the island's ambitions for independence.

Commenting on Lee's offer, Qian told reporters in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Wednesday that Chinese President Jiang Zemin in January 1995 had welcomed the Taiwan leadership to come to the mainland for a visit in what it called "an appropriate capacity", the official Xinhua Daily Telegraph newspaper said.

China has said Lee was welcome to visit China in his capacity as chairman of Taiwan's ruling Nationalist Party, but not as state president. Beijing considers Taiwan a rebel province not entitled to international recognition.

"We will now listen to what the Taiwan authorities say and observe their actions," Qian said.

China suspects Lee is merely paying lip service to his government's avowed goal of reunification with China and is secretly pushing the island toward independence.

Qian responded angrily to suggestions by Lee -- elected in March in Taiwan's first direct presidential elections -- that China could follow the example of development on Taiwan.

"This really is unblushing bragging and deceitful talk," Qian was quoted as saying.

Official media has vilified Lee as a "schemer" who should be tossed into the dustbin of history after he enraged Beijing by trying to lift the island out of diplomatic isolation with a landmark private trip to the United States last June.

Taiwan has said it does not want independence and China threatens to invade if it declares independence.

To underline its determination, Beijing held live-fire war games and missile tests near Taiwan in the run-up to the island's first direct presidential elections in March that Lee won by a landslide.

The two sides have been rivals since the Nationalists fled to the island after losing the Chinese civil war to the communists in 1949.

Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office issued a veiled attack on Tuesday in its first response to Lee's conditional offer to visit and said deeds, not words, were needed to prove Taipei's commitment to reunification.

"The Taiwan authorities must first stop their international activities to create 'two Chinas' or 'one China, one Taiwan', and must take the stand of a single China, not only in words but also in deeds," it said.

Beijing has demanded concrete action from Lee to prove the island backs reunification with the mainland and is not merely paying lip service to that goal.