Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said in Beijing Monday that China will never allow any foreign interference with the Taiwan issue, and it is not afraid of any such interference should it occur.
Taiwan issue is entirely an internal issue of China and solving the Taiwan issue "subjects to no interference by any outside forces," Wen said at a press conference shortly after the end of the Chinese NPC's annual session.
"We are not willing to see that any foreign interference would occur, but we are not afraid of any interference should it occur," Wen said.
China's top legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC), ratified the Anti-Secession Law with an overwhelming vote of 2,896 to nil Monday morning, setting a legal framework to prevent Taiwan's secession from China and to promote peaceful national reunification.
Chinese President Hu Jintao signed a presidential order for the immediate promulgation of the law at Monday's session. The law became effective upon promulgation.
Wen said the ten-article law is not targeted against Taiwan compatriots, but opposing and checking "Taiwan independence" secessionist activities.
"It is not a law of war but one for the peaceful reunification of the motherland," he said. "It is not a law intended to change the status quo that both sides of the Taiwan Straits belong to one China, but one conducive to peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits."
The Taiwan issue is one left over from China's civil war of the late 1940s. Wen stressed that although the mainland and Taiwan are yet to be reunified, that does not change the fact there is only one China in the world.
According to the Anti-Secession Law, China would use "non-peaceful means and other necessary measures" to stop Taiwan's secession should all efforts for a peaceful reunification prove futile.
The premier said China is unwilling to see such circumstance to occur. "So long as there is a glimmer of hope for peaceful reunification, we will exert our utmost to make it happen rather than give it up," he said.
The purpose of making such a law, Wen said, is to demonstrate "the common will and strong resolve" of the entire Chinese people, the 23 million Taiwan compatriots included, to safeguard China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and never to allow the "Taiwan independence" forces to make Taiwan secede from China.
Wen cited two US laws against secession made in 1861 before the Civil War of the United States, which have similar contents as China's.
Wen also hoped that all Taiwan compatriots would understand the purpose of the legislation, and that nations and people who uphold the one-China policy and wish peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits would understand and support the law.
On the issue of China's national defense, Wen said China exercises a defense-oriented policy, and its national defense expenditure cannot compare with that of the United States.
"I want to clarify a fact that over the past hundred years, China has always been bullied by others," he said. "China has never sent a single soldier to occupy even an inch of foreign land."
(Xinhua News Agency March 14, 2005)
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