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Today a momentous event happens between the China Mainland’s
People’s Republic of China or PRC and its province of Taiwan
(which goes under the formal name of the Republic of China or ROC).
Regular flights between the two are restored after 59 years.
Apart from special holidays when, during times
of goodwill on the part of the People’s Republic, special flights
from the mainland to Taiwan and back were allowed, direct flights to
and from the mainland and Taiwan were suspended in 1949. That was
the year when the Chinese Nationalist Party (the Kuomintang), which
had ruled China until then, and the officials of the Republic of
China fled to Taiwan after losing the civil war to the Communists.
Revered also in the mainland, the father of modern China, Sun Yat
Sen, founded and was the first president of ROC.
On Thursday, June 12, Beijing and Taipei agreed
to open their first offices on each other’s territory to
facilitate entry permit applications. And leaders of both agreed to
resume dialogue to bring about lasting peace and we hope eventual
reunification (under terms acceptable to the democratic and
libertarian people of Taiwan and its outer islands).
Talks between officials of China and Taiwan were
suspended in 1999. The suspension was the result of then ROC
President Lee Teng-hui’s description of the existing bilateral
trade and semi-official contacts as “a special state-to-state
relationship.” This infuriated the leaders in Beijing, which
correctly rejects references to its Taiwan province as another
state.
The bad relations across the Taiwan Strait
worsened when the Kuomintang lost the political leadership to the
coalition of pro-independence parties led by Chen Shui-bian’s
Democratic Progress Party (DPP) in March 2000. While he was
president of the Republic of China, Chen was always heard advancing
the notion that Taiwan should become a separate state. On September
30, 2007, the ruling DPP passed a resolution asserting Taiwan’s
separate identity from China. It called for the enactment of a new
constitution for a “normal country”—meaning an independent
state.
Under then President Chen until the defeat of
his DPP by the Kuomintang in March 2008, and the inauguration as ROC
president of the widely popular, Harvard-educated Ma Ying-jeou,
Beijing periodically responded angrily with threats of war to
Chen’s and his allies’ talk of statehood. Relations have
improved dramatically since then.
For the moment, Chinese tourists coming to
Taiwan from the mainland must join group tours. The permits to enter
Taiwan are given to the group, not to individuals. Taiwan residents
who enter mainland China as tourists have been allowed by the ROC
government to travel to mainland China as tourists—and to invest
and trade there—as individuals. But they always have had to leave
Taiwan for another destination—like Hong Kong, Singapore or the
Philippines—and take their Xiamen, Shanghai or Beijing flights
from these places. Through this method of connection, which involves
the Philippines, China has actually been Taiwan’s single biggest
trading partner for decades.
RP will benefit
Taiwan will initially allow an average of 3,000
Chinese tourists a day—as members of tour groups taking weekend
charter flights to Taiwan from 13 Chinese provinces including
Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu, Xinhua News Agency had reported
quoting the National Tourism Administration. The 36 weekend charters
will be shared equally between airlines based on the both sides of
the strait.
China’s President Hu Jintao said in a meeting
with Taiwan negotiator Chiang Pin-kun that the new direct flights
between China mainland and Taiwan would help promote direct links
for mail, trade and transport between the two sides.
The Philippines will benefit from these direct
links, the warming of relations between Taiwan and the mainland and
eventual reunification.
In 2007, bilateral trade between the Philippine
and Taiwan amounted to $5.95 billion and Taiwan investments here
came to $444.86 million. Taiwan in 2007 was the Philippines’ 4th
largest trading partner.
With Taiwan and the mainland getting closer,
their collaboration in investments in the Philippines will become
possible. Many projects that Taiwan cannot go into now—because
local businessmen are deferring to what Beijing and China-based
corporations might think—could become possible.
May Taiwan-mainland China links become stronger
from today onward.
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