Taiwan leader urges successor to stick to 1992 Consensus

Taiwan's current leader Ma Ying-jeou on Thursday reemphasized the significance of the 1992 Consensus as the foundation of mutual trust between the Chinese mainland and the island, urging his successor to stick to it.

Ma made the remarks days after Tsai Ing-wen, candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party, was elected Taiwan leader, defeating a major rival from the Kuomintang.

During the election, Tsai remained ambiguous about the 1992 Consensus, the core of which is the acknowledgment that the Chinese mainland and Taiwan belong to one and the same China.

The peace and prosperity across the Taiwan Strait is hard-won, and must be maintained attentively, Ma said at the 2016 CommonWealth Economic Forum.

"It is by no means easy to have reached cross-Strait peace and prosperity, thanks to the efforts of many people. We must learn to value them and to protect them," Ma said.

He said Taiwan's "correct" policies over the past eight years had helped realize economic prosperity on the island.

To seek development without the mainland market would not only be wrong, but may even be fatal for Taiwan, Ma warned.

He said peaceful environment is a prerequisite for economic growth. "In the past eight years, two sides across the Taiwan Strait have maintained peace and prosperity on the basis of the 1992 Consensus and accumulated sufficient mutual trust for cooperation."

Talking of his meeting with Xi Jinping in Singapore in early November, Ma called the meeting a "bridge of peace."

Ma compared the 1992 Consensus to traffic rules, saying that the new leader of the island must obey "traffic rules" in order to capitalize on the "bridge of peace" with the mainland. Endi