Tsai's speech on cross-Straits ties offers "an incomplete answer sheet:" mainland official

The Chinese mainland's Taiwan affairs authority on Friday described remarks by Taiwan's new leader Tsai Ing-wen on relations across the Taiwan Straits as "an incomplete test answer."

In her inauguration address, Tsai "was ambiguous about the fundamental issue, the nature of cross-Straits relations, an issue that is of utmost concern to people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits," the head of the Taiwan Work Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council said in a statement.

"She did not explicitly recognize the 1992 Consensus and its core implications, and made no concrete proposal for ensuring the peaceful and stable growth of cross-Straits relations," it reads.

"The current developments across the Taiwan Straits are becoming complex and grave. The Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Straits are following closely the prospect of the growth of cross-Straits relations," it reads.

"We have noted that in her address today, the new leader of the Taiwan authorities stated that the 1992 talks between the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) reached some common understanding," the official said.

Tsai also said she will handle affairs of cross-Straits relations in keeping with the existing defining document and related regulations and continue to advance the peaceful and stable growth of cross-Straits relations on the basis of the established political foundation.

Since 2008, the two sides of the Straits, acting on the common political foundation of adhering to the 1992 Consensus and opposing "Taiwan independence," have embarked on the path of peaceful growth of cross-Straits relations.

Situation across the Straits has been kept free from tension and instability and peace and stability have reigned. Maintaining this favorable environment is the shared desire of Chinese on both sides of the Straits as well as overseas Chinese and the international community, it reads.

"The key to ensuring peaceful growth of cross-Straits relations lies in adhering to the 1992 Consensus, which constitutes the political basis of cross-Straits relations," the statement reads.

"The 1992 Consensus explicitly sets out the fundamental nature of relations across the Taiwan Straits," the official said, stressing that it states that both the mainland and Taiwan belong to one and the same China and that cross-Straits relations are not state-to-state relations.

The 1992 Consensus was reached with explicit authorization of the two sides and has been affirmed by leaders of both sides. It thus constitutes the cornerstone of peaceful growth of cross-Straits relations, it reads.

Only affirmation of the political foundation that embodies the one China principle can ensure continued and institutionalized exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits, according to the statement.

"Both the mechanism of contact and communication between the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council and the Mainland Affairs Council of Taiwan and the mechanism of ARATS and SEF are based on the political foundation of the 1992 Consensus," it reads.

"The Taiwan compatriots share blood ties with us and there is no force that can separate us," the official said in the statement.

"We will further expand exchanges between compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, advance cross-Straits exchanges and cooperation in various fields, deepen the integrated economic and social development of the two sides and improve the well-being and strengthen the close bond of people across the Straits, so that the two sides of the Taiwan Straits will build a community of shared future and join hands to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," according to the statement.