Taiwan inaugurates new president
The inauguration of Ma Ying-jeou, 57, represents a clear break from the eight-year presidency of Chen Shui-bian, whose confrontational pro-independence policies often led to friction with Beijing — and with the United States, Taiwan's most important foreign partner.
Addressing political leaders and representatives from Taiwan's dwindling cadre of diplomatic allies, Ma exhorted Beijing to seize the chance created by his March election victory to build a better future for people on both sides of the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait.
"(I) hope that the two sides can use this rare historical opportunity," he said. "Let's open a new page of peace and prosperity."
Ma made it clear that even while he renounces the platform of formal independence espoused by his predecessor, he also opposes unification anytime soon with the mainland, from which Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949.
"We will adopt the principle of no independence, no unification and no use of force," he said.
Ma's comments in his inaugural address were consistent with his long-standing policies of seeking greater economic engagement with Beijing without renouncing Taiwan's effective sovereignty.
Ma's election victory was fashioned on his pledges to tie Taiwan's powerful but laggard high-tech economy to China's economic boom.
In recent weeks, however, he has made clear he has no intention of giving up on Taiwan's sovereignty — the core goal of China's policy toward the island.
In an interview last week with The Associated Press, he said it was highly unlikely that unification talks would be held "within our lifetimes."
And in late April, he named a strong supporter of Taiwanese sovereignty to oversee relations with China, in a move that elicited silence from the mainland and anger from China-friendly hard-liners in his own Nationalist Party.
Ma seemed to tie negotiations over Taiwan's political status to China adopting the island's democratic political system.
"What matters is not sovereignty, but core values and way of life," he said Tuesday. "We ... hope that mainland China will continue to move toward freedom, democracy and prosperity for all the people."
While Beijing has abandoned communism in all but name, it remains an authoritarian state, whose lack of political freedoms trouble Taiwanese, now well into their second decade of a freewheeling democracy.
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