Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The recent US-China Joint Statement suffers from intellectual laziness when it applauds the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China. Why applaud an unsustainable policy that undermines the current international trade status and sovereignty of Taiwan and supports a government that appears to consider democratic Taiwan a part of China and thus goes against the wishes of the vast majority of Taiwanese?

No matter if the backing of ECFA is a result of intellectual laziness or not, it supports China’s political engineering with the ultimate goal of annexing Taiwan. This runs against Taiwanese wishes and is not sustainable.

US President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), have given a show of unity, holding a joint press conference during Hu’s recent visit to the US. Hu would have been very happy with Obama’s reiteration of a commitment to the US’ “one China” policy, the Three Joint Communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) as a basis for the furthering of US-China relations. Not long before, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had also emphasized that the US would continue “our ‘one China’ policy” based on the TRA and the three communiques. Evidently, the US is keen on letting China understand — and perhaps also passing the information to the government here in Taiwan — that the TRA remains the cornerstone of Washington’s Taiwan policy and that its “one China” policy is not the same thing as China’s “one China” principle.