America’s highest circulation newspaper, USA Today, has published an opinion piece by Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou on Monday. The title of the article is “When I said ‘Mr Xi’”.
President Ma said in the article that the leaders from the two sides have not met since Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong last held a meeting right before the civil war broke out in China, almost 70 years ago. On November 7th, Ma and Chinese leader Xi Jinping addressed each other as “Mister” instead of “President" or "Chairman” and they split the bill for dinner. Ma said that the sole purpose of the meeting was consolidating the unprecedented cross-strait peace and prosperity.
President Ma also said that he had set clear goals before the meeting. Domestically, he set out to establish transparent and trustworthy processes within the government. In the area of cross-strait relations, he aimed to establish a platform for communication based on equality and integrity for future cross-strait talks. Internationally, he said that he that the two leaders hope to convey a strong peace-loving message, which would be beneficial to Taiwan, Mainland China and the United States.
Ma said the meeting also marked the first time the leaders from both sides endorsed the “1992 Consensus”. Both sides agreed to the concept of “One China” while agreeing to interpret each in their own way. That’s been used as the basis for cross-strait interaction.
In his piece, Ma also said that he had clearly expressed to Xi concerns over weapons deployed against Taiwan, and Taiwan’s dwindling international space. Ma urged his counterpart to show goodwill and take action.