China's Hu says Taiwan won't be independent

Associated Press | December 31 2004

BEIJING — Chinese President Hu Jintao touted his country's booming economy in a televised year-end speech Friday, while calling for a larger role for Beijing in world affairs in 2005 and vowing never to allow Taiwan to become independent.

In wide-ranging remarks, Hu characterized China as a peace-seeking nation that shares the world's hopes for an end to war and poverty and that will help other countries in any way it can.

Hu is head of both the government and the Communist Party of China, which holds a monopoly on power in this nation of 1.3 billion people. In September, Hu gained the additional post of chairman of the party's Central Military Commission, which oversees China's armed forces — the largest in the world.

Hu said that China has played a constructive role in regional and global security, and "holds high the banner of peace, development and cooperation." The country "adheres to the policy of a nation's self-determination and carries out a peaceful foreign policy," Hu said.

China's economy, buoyed by huge exports to America and Europe, led the developing world in 2004 with a growth rate forecast to end the year at 8.8 per cent. "Our national economy achieved stable development ... and people's livelihoods got further improvements," Hu told television viewers.

In the coming year he said China would "continue to carry on reforms and openness, and promote fast and stable economic development."

Hu promised more trade with Hong Kong and Macau, former European colonies that returned to Chinese rule in the late 1990s. He said Beijing would "support the work of the administrative leaders," in the former colonies, as well as promote economic ties between those territories and the mainland "to maintain peaceful and stable prosperity."

On Taiwan, "we will try to achieve peaceful unification but we will not allow anyone in any form to split Taiwan from China," he said, appealing to the Taiwanese people to curb efforts to make the island independent.

Beijing claims self-ruling Taiwan as its territory and has threatened to attack if it declares formal independence. Hu reiterated Beijing's willingness to open dialogue as long as Taiwan acknowledges it is part of "one China" ruled by Beijing — a formula the island's leaders have rejected.

While characterizing China as peaceful and stable, Hu said the world is "undergoing very deep changes." On the one hand, economic globalization and progress toward a "multipolar" world create opportunities, he said without elaborating.

On the other hand, stability is undermined by regional conflicts, terrorism, the economic gap between north and south, environmental deterioration and trade friction, he said.

"To uphold peaceful development is the common wish of all peoples in the world," he said, adding that China would join with other nations "to build a just and reasonable new order of international politics and economy." The Chinese people feel sympathy for those suffering from war, hunger and poverty, he added. "We would like to offer to help as we can."