Managing risk is a key to economic and trade ties with China, Taiwan's opposition leader said on Saturday in a debate among presidential candidates, just two weeks before the country's next election. The comments by Tsai Ing-wen, chairwoman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), come weeks after she called a plan by Chinese state-backed technology group to invest around $2.6 billion in Taiwan a "huge threat" to the island's semiconductor industry.
"The DPP has never excluded economic and trade exchanges with China," Tsai said in the debate, which was televised live. "But we pay attention to the management of the risks." Tsai said the DPP, which leans toward independence for Taiwan, hopes to continue in the "spirit" of using risk management and control to manage Taiwan's economic and trade exchanges with China.
Last month, Tsai said until doubts were resolved over plans by China's state-backed Tsinghua Unigroup to partly acquire three Taiwanese chip companies, the plans were unlikely be approved. The deals are still awaiting approval by regulators and company shareholders. Tsai has tread carefully in discussing how she will engage China if the DPP returns to power. The party has historically favoured the island's formal independence and says it believes only Taiwan's people can decide its future. Beijing takes this to mean it wants independence.
Defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war with the Communists in 1949. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring what it deems a renegade province under its control. Relations have improved since the ruling Nationalist Party's Ma Ying-jeou became Taiwan president in 2008, and the two sides have signed a series of landmark trade and tourism deals.
China's Taiwan Affairs Office chief, Zhang Zhijun, said in his new year greeting to the people of Taiwan that "complex changes" lie ahead in ties. People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should remain alert to "pro-independence, separatist" forces, he said. Tsai is one of three presidential contenders, which also include Nationalist chairman Eric Chu and James Soong, chairman of the People First Party. Taiwan votes for a new president and parliament on January 16.