March 28, 2005
Catherine Armitage, China correspondent
The Australian
THE Chinese Government issued a sharp warning yesterday that a march by hundreds of thousands of people in Taipei to protest at China's new anti-secession law on Taiwan had created "new tension across the Taiwan Strait".
China vowed, again, never to back down over Taiwan. In an official commentary carried in all major newspapers and broadcast on state television, it accused the "extreme Taiwan independence secessionists" of "malevolently distorting the principles of the law to misguide the Taiwan people and instigate antagonism and create new tension across the Taiwan Strait".
But the big problem for Beijing is that most of the rest of the world thinks it is Beijing, not Taiwan, that has increased the risk of hostilities over the island, by introducing the new law authorising the use of force against Taiwan just when relations looked ripe for repair.
The law, which gives China legal backing to use "non-peaceful means" if Taiwan moves to formally split from the mainland, has unravelled a European Union consensus to lift a 16-year-old ban on trading arms with China, a move which had been expected by mid-year but may now be delayed.
By underlining China's willingness to go to war over Taiwan, the law has also set back China's multi-faceted diplomatic campaign to persuade the world, and the East Asian region especially, that its rise as a world power is peaceful and does not constitute a threat to other nations.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12675394%255E2703,00.html