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By Ben Blanchard
TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan and China can peacefully resolve their variations, former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou stated on Thursday after assembly Chinese language President Xi Jinping, including that individuals on either side of the Taiwan Strait share the identical tradition and historical past.
Ma, president from 2008 to 2016, final 12 months grew to become the primary former or sitting Taiwanese chief to go to China.
On Wednesday, he held his second assembly with Xi, following a landmark summit in Singapore in 2015 when Ma was nonetheless Taiwan’s chief, which was the primary time Chinese language and Taiwanese leaders had met following the tip of the civil conflict in 1949.
Talking on his return from Beijing, Ma stated he hoped younger Taiwanese can put apart ideology and realise the historic and cultural hyperlinks between Taiwan and China.
“Extra importantly, the Chinese language on either side of the Strait can deal with disputes peacefully,” he added.
China considers democratically-governed Taiwan its personal territory, and has ramped up navy and political stress to say these claims. Neither authorities recognises the opposite.
Ma, who was accompanied by a bunch of scholars to Beijing, stated his go to had proven the youth that individuals on both aspect of the strait are “descendants of the Yan and Yellow Emperors”, an expression referring to a typical ancestor.
In an obvious slip up, Ma added that individuals on both aspect of the strait each belong to “the Republic of China”, earlier than correcting himself to say “the Chinese language folks”, utilizing wording referring to these ethnically or culturally Chinese language.
Ma made the identical verbal slip up throughout his assembly with Xi, in footage carried on Taiwanese tv stations.
The defeated Republic of China authorities fled to Taiwan in 1949 after dropping a civil conflict to Mao Zedong’s communists.
China’s authorities, formally the Folks’s Republic of China, doesn’t recognise the existence of the Republic of China, Taiwan’s official title, making the point out in Xi’s presence extremely delicate.
Ma laughed however didn’t reply the query when requested if this wording was intentional.
Taiwan’s authorities rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying the Folks’s Republic of China has by no means dominated the island and that solely the Taiwanese folks can resolve their future.
China says its precondition for dialogue is to recognise that each China and Taiwan belong to “one China”, which Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has refused to do.
Xi instructed Ma that exterior inference couldn’t cease the “household reunion” between the 2 sides of the Strait, and there have been no points that might not be mentioned. He made no point out of utilizing power in opposition to Taiwan in his public remarks.
Talking at an everyday information convention in Taipei, Jan Jyh-horng, spokesperson for Taiwan’s China-policy making Mainland Affairs Council, stated China was guilty for rigidity in ties with Taiwan.
“It is not us sending navy plane and ships to harass them on a regular basis,” Jan stated, referring to China’s nearly day by day navy actions across the island.
Ma stays a senior member of Taiwan’s fundamental opposition celebration the Kuomintang (KMT), which in January misplaced for the third time in a row the presidential election, however has no official celebration place. The KMT advocates shut ties with China and dialogue, however strongly denies being pro-Beijing.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Enhancing by Miral Fahmy and Clarence Fernandez)
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