Senior Chinese envoy tells Taiwan his country wants to move closer to peace with island

China envoy tells Taiwan he sees move toward peace

TAICHUNG, Taiwan — China’s senior Taiwan envoy told his hosts Monday that Beijing wants to “move down the road of peace,” a day after tens of thousands of Taiwanese demonstrators blasted the government for its China-friendly policies.

Chen Yunlin’s statement in the central city of Taichung came amid heavy security, with police preventing several hundred protesters from besieging his hotel. The protesters view Chen as the spearhead for Beijing’s proclaimed policy of uniting Taiwan with the mainland. The sides split amid civil war in 1949.

Chen arrived in Taichung on Monday to discuss a wide-ranging free-trade agreement with Taiwanese officials, part of Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou’s push to link the island’s economy ever closer to China’s.

Four minor economic accords are also on the agenda.

Since assuming office in May 2008, Ma has eased tensions across the 100-mile- (160-kilometer-) wide Taiwan Strait to their lowest level in 60 years, turning his back on predecessor Chen Shui-Bian’s pro-independence policies amid a welter of business-boosting initiatives.

They include launching regular air and sea links between the sides and ending across-the-board restrictions on Chinese investment in Taiwan.

Shortly after his arrival, Chen acknowledged the progress the sides had already made, and said he hopes that further gains can be made.

“History has proved and will prove that the two sides of the strait are marching ahead on the right path,” he said. “We want to move down the road of peace.”

Chen spoke a day after tens of thousands of opposition demonstrators marched through the streets of Taichung to protest Ma’s policies.

The main opposition Democratic Progressive Party believes the president’s China-friendly push sets the stage for an eventual Chinese takeover of the island — a charge Ma vehemently denies.

The DPP says Ma’s intended trade deal — formally known as the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, or ECFA — will flood the island with cheap Chinese products, prompting massive job losses.

“Our president has turned blind to the possibility that jobs will be lost” after signing the ECFA with China, DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen told protesters Sunday.

As recently as five months ago, most of the Taiwanese public accepted Ma’s argument that closer economic ties with China would aid Taiwanese prosperity — even allowing for the global economic downturn.

But Ma’s mishandling of the response to a devastating typhoon in August began to dent his popularity, as did a more recent miscue involving secret negotiations on the removal of a ban on some U.S. beef imports.

Earlier this month, Ma’s Nationalists bested the DPP by only 2 percentage points in local elections — a far cry from the 17 point margin that Ma enjoyed over his DPP rival in the March 2008 presidential poll.