Transcript of Interview

In other words, we maintain the status quo as far as the bilateral relations are concerned.

We haven't really started negotiating this issue with the other side; we only announced our intention and our ideas. But even that has produced some concrete results. For instance, just beginning with small things, four years ago we nominated a trade law expert to the [World Trade Organization] to become a member of the countervailing measures panel, which is really a dispute-settlement mechanism. But he was rejected. He's actually a top-notch trade lawyer in Taiwan. But four years later, this year, we nominated him again, and he was accepted, together with another trade law expert from mainland China. And actually, the two specialists talked to each other before they were both accepted by WTO authorities and became members of the countervailing panel, which is considered by many as a sign of goodwill.

On the other hand, last August when we send our team to the Olympic Games, the mainland side decided to call us Zhongguo Taibei, instead of Zhonghua Taibei. The differences attach different meanings in mainland China and Taiwan. We prefer Zhonghua Taibei, although the English version is the same -- Chinese Taipei. They originally said they didn't do anything wrong, because according to the agreement reached by both sides in Hong Kong in 1989, in all the occasions of the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, Taiwan should be called Chinese Taipei, Zhonghua Taibei, but [on] our side of the IOC contacts there's no such restriction, so they could call us Zhongguo Taibei. So the media of the mainland always called us Zhongguo Taibei -- in Sydney in 2000 and Athens in 2004.

So this year they were going to do the same. But this year was different, because Beijing is where Chinese is spoken, so Zhongguo Taibei and Zhonghua Taibei do make a difference, and so we protested and demanded that Zhonghua Taibei be used instead of Zhongguo Taibei. They thought for a while and quietly asked their media to call us Zhonghua Taibei throughout the Olympics. I think that is also a sign of goodwill.

Of course, another one is [that] this time we were able to send a former vice president to the APEC [Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit in November] meeting in Lima, Peru, which was unprecedented, given the 17-year history of APEC. That was also a rarely seen sort of phenomenon, when Mr. Lian Zhan [spelled Lien Chan in Taiwan], who was a representative of myself, was able to chat, to attend conferences with world leaders. So when you see all these people taking pictures together, this was something we haven't seen for maybe two or three decades, and that certainly gives people in Taiwan a sense of dignity. And this is a very important accomplishment as far as foreign policy is concerned.

On the other hand, we were able to acquire five types of military hardware from the United States. The Bush administration notified Congress in early October about this. Originally a lot of the opposition people thought this was killed, because I went too close to the mainland, so the U.S. would like to punish me. But obviously they were all wrong.

So we have three ostensibly incompatible things happening in two months. The procurement of weapons from the United States, which suddenly antagonized the mainland for a while, and then we have Chen Yunlin coming to Taiwan, signing four agreements with us and creating a situation which would structurally change the cross-strait relations. And then we are able to send Lian Zhan to APEC. All these three things happened within two months. It would not have been thought of, barely six months ago. So you can see that there are signs of goodwill from the mainland.

But on the other hand, we have also seen signs of diplomats trying to squeeze us out of international organizations, so this is a mixed picture. Certainly, we hope in the future we are able to see more goodwill and less ill will. But if we continue the current pace of cross[-strait] relations, we are relatively confident that this will be accomplished in the future. When more and more incidents combine to create an atmosphere of mutual trust, then I think a lot of things can happen. This is exactly what the people of Taiwan would like to have. On the one hand, without sacrificing our sovereignty or our dignity, we are able to make friends on the Chinese mainland, this is actually in the interest of all in Taiwan.

Our basic idea, as you know, is the three no's. No unification talks. No pursuit of de jure independence of Taiwan. And no use of force. This is actually the reflection of the mainstream public opinion in Taiwan, so we will stick to that in dealing with the Chinese mainland.

Q: When do you expect Taiwan to be in the World Health Organization?

A: Of course, WHO['s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly] will be convened in May next year. We hope we could attend as an observer, but I think that requires a lot of efforts, a lot of negotiations and a lot of consultations. Fortunately, judging from the reactions from our friends, United States, Japan, European Union and Australia, New Zealand, they generally support our meaningful participation, quote unquote, in World Health Assembly next year.

When we made that proposal first, in last September, in the meetings before the General Assembly was convened in the United Nations, although the discussion was brief, but in the general debate quite a few countries rose to support our position. We're not asking to be admitted to the WHO in the name of Taiwan, no, we're not doing that, what we're doing is calling upon the United Nations to examine the need for the 23 million people's meaningful participation in the activities of the U.N. specialized agencies.