Former MAC Minister Su Chi
Taipei, Aug. 6 (CNA) Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Saturday denied that two top former officials affiliated with the Kuomintang (KMT) party have been forced out of their positions as board members of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), saying that the two have “resigned in recent days.”
The resignation of former MAC Minister Su Chi (蘇起) and Chang Jung-kung (張榮恭), chairman of Central Daily News Online and former deputy secretary-general of the KMT, was reported to the SEF’s board of directors and supervisors at their meeting on Friday, according to MAC, the agency under the Cabinet responsible for Taiwan’s China policy.
Until Feb. 2014, the Taipei government had to conduct its relations with China through the SEF and its Chinese counterpart — the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits — as the two sides do not have official ties.
The MAC thanked Su and Chang for their past support for the SEF and said it respects the SEF’s handling of the resignation.
Their replacements will be elected in future board meetings, according to the MAC.
It stressed that the two former board members, who are considered important figures in cross-strait affairs, were not forced to leave the SEF by the Presidential Office, as the local media has reported, but have tendered their resignation recently.
Su had also served as secretary-general of the National Security Council, the president’s deputy secretary general and deputy director of the KMT’s former working group on mainland China affairs. He has been chairman of Taipei Forum, a non-partisan think tank, since 2011.
Chang, meanwhile, was director of the KMT’s Mainland Affairs Department.
The KMT and the currently Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led administration have very different stances on Taiwan’s relations with China. While both favor peace and good relations between the two sides, the KMT has traditionally been pro-unification and the DPP pro-independence.
So far, the DPP’s position of refusing to acknowledge that Taiwan and the mainland are part of one China, and Beijing’s refusal to back down from that precondition, have led to an impasse in relations developing further since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) from the DPP was inaugurated in May.
(By Chen Chia-lun and Christie Chen)
