China publicizes landing drills near Taiwan after elections

“Welcome to democratic and free Taiwan”, wrote another DPP spokesman, Yang Chia-liang, in a post which the party said it did not plan to delete according to the Focus Taiwan website. During the meeting, Tsai expressed her desire to maintain Taiwan’s friendly relations with the U.S. She stressed that Taipei will “fulfill its responsibility to promote peace and stability in the region”. Beijing will be watching to see if Ms. Tsai and her party take any overtly pro-independence stands, as they have in the past. “We have completed the third transition of political power in Taiwan’s democratic history”.

Tsai on Wednesday posted a proposal ensure the impartiality of the new legislative speaker.

The DPP’s dominance in all of Taiwan’s major population centers underscores a growing consensus on the island that its political identity is separate from China, even though the government now exists within the framework of the Constitution of the Republic of China as designed by the KMT and imported from the Chinese mainland in 1949.

Others referred to Tsai as a “provincial governor”.

However, Tsai, without using the term “1992 consensus”, said she “understands and respects” the “historic fact” that Taiwan and China “reached some common acknowledgments and understanding in 1992”.

Facebook is blocked in China, though there are ways round it even if most Chinese people don’t have access to that technology. Over the past eight years, KMT president Ma Ying-jeou brought Taiwan closer to China by signing numerous trade deals and maintaining there is only “one China”, albeit differing with Beijing on what that means. “When I manage cross-strait relations in the future, it will be based on proactive communication”. Tsai has refused to endorse Beijing’s “one China principle” but hasn’t publicly repudiated it either. But popular resentment is said to be strong that the expansion of Taiwanese firms’ activities in China has led to the hollowing out of the island’s industries and jobs, and that the deeper cross-strait business relations have not benefited Taiwanese people at large while turning the island increasingly dependent on the mainland. Party-aligned academics have warned that if Tsai takes Taiwan down the path of independence, it will prove a “dead end”.

Lin Por-fong, chairperson at the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (CNAIC), says the government should avoid a window period in operations and that the new government should cooperate with the current one, forming a coalition cabinet. If the Tsai administration were to turn confrontational toward China tensions would mount, posing a serious threat to security throughout East Asia.

The Taiwan government insisted it was business as usual on Tuesday (Jan 19), three days after the ruling party was routed in elections and a day after the Premier rebuffed attempts by the President to keep him in his job. More importantly, she had the support of the New Power Party, which was formed just 11 months ago by young Taiwanese who were part of the 2014 Sunflower Movement.

“Taiwanese people are very peaceful”.