Taiwan's candidate urges stronger ties with China

Taiwan's candidate urges stronger ties with China

TAIPEI (Agencies): Taiwan's pro-independence presidential candidate on Sunday urged closer economic ties with China, including an end to a half-century ban on direct transportation links.

Former Taipei mayor Chen Shui-bian said the mainland was too important to Taiwan's economy to be ignored, and urged more flexible policies towards Beijing in an apparent bid to clarify his China policy and assuage voter nervousness.

But economic necessity must be balanced with measures to keep Taiwan's economy free of Chinese control, and China must soften its hardline towards the island for the relationship to improve, said Chen, who represents the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party.

In a speech to a conference on China relations, Chen sought to position himself between current official discouragement of increased business with China and alternative calls for a complete embrace of the China market.

That appeared aimed at grasping the initiative on relations with China, an issue of key importance in next March's presidential polls.

Chen, in third in most polls among presidential candidates, has to work extra hard to convince voters that his election will not prompt a violent response from China.

Though China has ruled Taiwan in just four of the last 100 years, Beijing continues to consider the island a breakaway province to be reunified with by force if necessary.

The sides last split amid a civil war in 1949, and military tensions between them flared again this summer over an assertion of Taiwanese statehood by Nationalist President Lee Teng-hui.

Both sides say they want to reunify eventually, but the DPP calls for making Taiwan's de-facto independence formal and permanent. However, the party has softpedaled the independence call in recent years as it attempts to break the 54-year Nationalist hold on power here.

"Taiwan needs China and China needs Taiwan. How to pursue reconciliation amid contradictions, and establish order amid conflict is not only important to the two sides, but is also a somber issue for all of Asia and the outside world," said Chen.

Separately, Taiwan's Kuomintang ruling party officials and analysts said on Sunday that the Kuomintang (KMT) should heed a warning that its grip on power is loosening after it lost a by- election for a new local government head.

KMT candidate Chang Cheng-hsiung only came in third in Saturday's vote in central Yunlin county losing to independent Chang Jung-wei, and even trailing behind the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the unprecedented result. The elections were to fill a vacancy left after the KMT's head of the Yunlin government, known as a magistrate, Su Wen-hsiung, died earlier this year.

"It sent a warning (to the KMT) ... As a party member I felt deeply worried," Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou told reporters on Sunday after the elections.

"The KMT may see its local influence further undermined if the party does not pay more heed to training the party's grass-roots officials," Ma said.

It was the first time the KMT had lost polls in the poor coastal county since nationalist party leaders fled to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of a civil war with the Chinese Communists.

The KMT still dominates the central government but has gradually lost power in local elections over the past 10 years, and now controls less than one third of local governments.

The polls outcome however was a boost to former Taiwan provincial governor James Soong, who is running as an independent candidate in next year's presidential polls.

"The images of both the KMT and the DPP failed to attract the voters ... despite their all-out campaign efforts," the United Daily News said in an editorial on Sunday.