Premier Jiang Yi-huah is calling on Beijing to allow a meeting between leaders of Mainland China and Taiwan at the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting.
Jiang made the comments Thursday during an interview with BBC Chinese. Both Taiwan and China are full members of APEC. But Taiwan’s president is barred from attending the leaders’ summit due to opposition from Beijing. President Ma has repeatedly expressed his wish to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in Beijing later this year. But so far the Chinese side has not been very enthusiastic.
Jiang said Taiwan thinks the APEC is the best place to meet because it wants to avoid political complications.
"If we can see this and allow the meeting to happen, it will be a most wonderful thing," Jiang said. "But if Mainland China is worried that Taiwan will take advantage of APEC for its own political agenda and therefore decides not to allow President Ma to go to the meeting, I think it would be a real pity. However, we’re still hopeful," he said.
During the interivew, Jiang was also asked about the trade in services agreement that Taiwan signed with China last June. The controversial pact has failed to clear Taiwan's legislature, and a ruling party lawmaker's attempt to pass a first reading of it triggered a large-scale student movement in March.
Jiang said China and South Korea are about to sign a free trade agreement, so he hopes that the trade in services pact can be ratified soon. But he insisted that Beijing did not put any pressure on Taiwan, adding that the government is not trying to pander to Beijing when it says it wants the pact approved as soon as possible.