Government Scholar on Cross-Strait Mutual Military and Security Trust
[Editor’s Note: Research fellow Zheng Jian, the Secretary General of the Chinese government’s think tank on Taiwan affairs, the Association for Development and Promotion of Chinese Culture, published a special article in the August issue of China Review magazine. The title of the article was "Achieving Mutual Military Trust across the Strait through the Use of Strategic Cooperation." He stressed that "to establish cross-strait mutual military trust, the primary condition and the most difficult issue come from the words ‘mutual trust.’" "Mutual trust has at least three meanings: The first is that we must insist on the principle of ‘one China’; the second is that we must be firmly against ‘Taiwan independence’; and the third is that we have to be firm in walking toward the general direction of unification." The author said, “What we can do right now to establish strategic cooperation involves military means, to jointly safeguard the common strategic interests of the Chinese people across the strait. This includes jointly safeguarding the Diaoyu Islands (which Japan calls the Senkaku Islands), the East China Sea, and the territorial and maritime sovereignty of the Nansha Islands (which some other countries call the Spratly Islands) in the South China Sea, and jointly maintaining airspace security, livelihood interests, overseas interests, and so on." With the article there was also a picture of retired generals from China and Taiwan playing golf together. The following is a translation to selected parts of the article.] [1]