lennart
19-11-03, 20:47
Beijing threatens war over Taiwan
By Hamish McDonald, Herald Correspondent in Beijing
November 20, 2003
China yesterday warned it may go to war to gain control over Taiwan because the island's politicians were edging towards formal independence and the White House was taking an equivocal stand on the issue.
The blunt warning, the first use of such a threat in at least three years, comes as campaigning begins on the island of 22 million people for the presidential elections in March.
President Chen Shui-bian, a supporter of independence for Taiwan before he won office in 2000, has pushed against the web of diplomatic and political constraints that have maintained the current effective autonomy for three decades since the US switched recognition to Beijing.
Last week he promised that if re-elected he would hold a referendum in December 2006 to make sweeping changes to the constitution, which has been in force since the island became the last refuge of the Kuomintang - the Chinese nationalist forces pushed out of the mainland by the communists in 1949.
China fears the referendum will turn into a vote on a declaration of independence, and remove the Taiwan political system's formal name as the "Republic of China", which implicitly sees Taiwan as part of a single Chinese nation.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/19/1069027192249.html
Het is lang stil geweest, maar nu de VS druk bezig zijn in Afghanistan en Iraq, zal China waarschijnlijk denken dat ze politiek voordeel kunnen halen :o
By Hamish McDonald, Herald Correspondent in Beijing
November 20, 2003
China yesterday warned it may go to war to gain control over Taiwan because the island's politicians were edging towards formal independence and the White House was taking an equivocal stand on the issue.
The blunt warning, the first use of such a threat in at least three years, comes as campaigning begins on the island of 22 million people for the presidential elections in March.
President Chen Shui-bian, a supporter of independence for Taiwan before he won office in 2000, has pushed against the web of diplomatic and political constraints that have maintained the current effective autonomy for three decades since the US switched recognition to Beijing.
Last week he promised that if re-elected he would hold a referendum in December 2006 to make sweeping changes to the constitution, which has been in force since the island became the last refuge of the Kuomintang - the Chinese nationalist forces pushed out of the mainland by the communists in 1949.
China fears the referendum will turn into a vote on a declaration of independence, and remove the Taiwan political system's formal name as the "Republic of China", which implicitly sees Taiwan as part of a single Chinese nation.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/19/1069027192249.html
Het is lang stil geweest, maar nu de VS druk bezig zijn in Afghanistan en Iraq, zal China waarschijnlijk denken dat ze politiek voordeel kunnen halen :o