FEBRUARY 2010
DEMOCRACY & PROGRESS
DPP debates future strategy at
National Party Congress
DPP Chair Tsai Ing-wen makes the opening remarks at the DPP’s National
Party Congress held on January 24.
The DPP held its 13th National
Party Congress on Jan. 24 to
gather together party representa-
tives nationwide to discuss issues
concerning the future direction of
the DPP. Among the party issues,
the media and the public paid
closest attention to the issue of
nominations for the 2010 city
mayors and councilors elections.
The theme of the Congress
was “Unity and Progress - Guard-
ing Democracy,” reflecting the
DPP’s resolution to keep the
party united in order to maintain
a progressive DPP and to safe-
guard Taiwan’s democracy.
Prior to the Congress’ open-
ing, DPP Chair Tsai Ing-wen said
that its main purpose was to cre-
ate a consensus regarding the
nominations of candidates for the
end-of-the-year elections. Chair
Tsai said that the agenda was cer-
tainly very simple, but it was im-
portant for the DPP to spend ef-
fort and time to enhance the
communication process within
the party in order to confront and
debate the different opinions
within the party.
During the Congress, Chair
Tsai said that the DPP must not
remain complacent due to recent
election achievements. She also
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
DPP debates future
strategy at National Party
Congress
- Pg. 1
Chair Tsai Ing-wen’s
comments on President
Ma Ying-jeou’s Feb. 6
public ECFA report
- Pg. 2
DPP’s latest poll results
- Pg. 4
DPP comments on U.S.
arms sale to Taiwan
- Pg. 5
said that DPP members must not
forget that, when confronting a
bigger challenge, members must
remember not to battle among
themselves, especially when the
DPP is trying to determine the
election candidates.
PAGE 1

DPP Chair Tsai Ing-wen’s comments on President Ma
Ying-jeou’s Feb. 9 public ECFA report
“President Ma Ying-jeou’s ECFA report was
very disappointing. His report contents did not
surpass the already publicized government ma-
terial, and it appeared as though the President
repeated past propaganda. This leaves the peo-
ple’s concerns about ECFA still unresolved.
“We felt special disappointment in the Presi-
dent’s lack of seriousness concerning the issue
of the industries impacted by ECFA, and his
failure to mention the government’s future plan
regarding how to resolve this problem. In the
current phase of negotiations on ECFA, the pub-
lic is very concerned about legislative oversight
as well as transparency by the Executive Yuan,
and the President did not show a willingness to
confront these issues.
“If the President believed that presenting a
half hour report on ECFA is ‘transparent’
enough, then it is my duty to tell the people that
this is not transparency. What we saw was a
very shallow way to handle the ECFA problems,
and if this report is a reflection of what Presi-
dent Ma understands about ECFA, we have
cause to be concerned. However, if the Presi-
dent has other items on ECFA that he knows
more about, then we have to ask the President to
give a systematic description of them, including
the substantive positive and negative level chal-
lenges that we face when dealing with ECFA.
“Since the government has been promoting
ECFA for a year and a half, it has encountered
questions and doubts from various sectors of
society. We have not seen President Ma give a
clear, far-sighted or rigorous explanation that
deals with these questions. What is of most con-
cern is that the President is still unclear about
what has made people anxious. Therefore, it is
my wish to tell the President what worries the
people:
FEBRUARY 2010
“First is the issue of public trust in the Presi-
dent. This includes the 633 promises broken by
this administration over this year and half, and
the way that this administration has dealt with
foreign negotiations, showing that the admini-
stration has failed to take into account the pub-
lic interest. This can be seen in the cases of the
U.S. beef issue and the poisonous melamine
milk powder incident. This public trust issue
also includes issues with China. For example, in
the direct flights agreements, Taiwan is still un-
able to obtain extension rights; on judicial
agreements, we still do not see major criminals
extradited to Taiwan; and on food hygiene
agreements, we do not see the administration
fighting for the rights of Taiwanese victims.
“The President tells us that ECFA does more
good than harm. Even if this is correct, the
President should tell us what the ‘harm’ is. Over
the past year and a half, many people have told
us of ECFA’s ‘disadvantages’, so we ask Presi-
dent Ma to tell us what he perceives the ‘disad-
vantages’ to be? How does he plan to deal with
them? We are concerned that the President does
not know what these disadvantages are, how big
of an impact they can cause, and that he seems
psychologically not ready to cope with them.
“In foreign negotiation agreements, the
President has failed to tell us how he plans to
strengthen his negotiating team. We are utterly
disappointed in this administration’s negotiating
powers, whether in issues such as communicat-
ing with the public or making foreign break-
throughs. Especially, if the negotiators are
found to have commercial interests in any eco-
nomic or trade negotiation, they should be im-
mediately removed from the team. However,
President Ma has failed to deal with this conflict
of interest problem.
... continued on the next page
PAGE 2

...DPP Chair Tsai’s comments on
President Ma’s ECFA report
“The public is worried that
the President is unaware of our
national economic priorities.
Our country is now encounter-
ing the biggest economic crisis
in unemployment. The Presi-
dent has not told us how he
plans to tackle unemployment
through the benefits of ECFA.
It is my responsibility to report
to the public that we foresee a
more serious unemployment
situation through the zero-tariff
item in ECFA. If, as the Presi-
dent has said, by signing
ECFA, Taiwanese products
will be zero-tariff exported to
China, the same would apply to
Chinese products coming into
the Taiwanese market. From
the perspective of Taiwan’s
industrial sectors, more facto-
ries will be moved to China
and these factories will return
their zero-tariffed products to
Taiwan, thus causing even
more unemployment.
“The President has said that
agricultural products will not
be liberalized, even mentioning
that during the DPP’s admini-
stration some agricultural
products were already liberal-
ized. I need to clarify that for
each product that the DPP al-
lowed liberalization, every one
went through careful consid-
eration of Taiwan’s agricultural
industry. However, the DPP did
not further open import of ag-
ricultural products because we
felt that if we continued open-
ing them up, there would be a
fundamental impact on the in-
dustry. Even though President
Ma has promised that liberali-
zation will not happen in the
short-term, we want to know if
President Ma will be able to
uphold this promise in the
long-term. Will China accept
that their agricultural products
cannot be imported to Taiwan?
If China is willing to accept
that, we wonder how China is
going to explain to the rest of
the WTO members this special
concession to Taiwan?
“Even if China can handle
the WTO problem, will they be
willing to give us such a privi-
lege? Will they not ask some-
thing political in return? Any
country that has dealt with
China knows that any eco-
nomic and trade transaction
involves some political motive.
However, President Ma has not
mentioned what the political
issues are. He has said that
there are no politics involved
in ECFA, and I wish to tell the
President that any dealing with
China involves politics. We ask
President Ma to tell us that in
his understanding, China is
good enough to give us a one-
sided concession without ask-
ing anything in return?
FEBRUARY 2010
continued #om the previous page
“The President has said that
Chinese workers will not come
in and that perhaps our un-
skilled workers will not be un-
der immediate pressure at this
stage. However, the low-
priced advantage of Chinese
products entering Taiwan has a
relationship to the deprivation
of employment opportunities
for Taiwanese workers. Has the
President not thought about the
fact that after ECFA opens up,
China’s service industry and
white-collar workers will flood
Taiwan’s market and replace
white-collar jobs?
“It is because of the great
number of problems that are
still unresolved that the public
is extremely worried about
ECFA. In the latest poll re-
leased by the DPP, 74.1% of
the population said they favor
the Legislative Yuan setting up
a cross strait affairs monitoring
group because they wish to see
the Legislature strengthen its
power of supervision. The
President has said that the
commission’s mechanisms are
adequate, but I would like to
report that they are not enough
because ECFA contains many
topics and it requires a special
team to conduct an effective
and comprehensive monitoring
capability. Using the USTR as
an example, the U.S. Congress
and the executive branch en-
... continued on the next page
PAGE 3

...DPP Chair Tsai’s comments on
President Ma’s ECFA report
gage in a co-regulatory process
where the executive branch
does not have dominance in the
agreement process. Therefore,
we are strongly in favor of es-
tablishing a commission to
monitor cross strait affairs, and
we very much hope that the
public supports us in this task.”
DPP Poll: Over 74.1% support legislative oversight in
cross strait affairs
The DPP Public Survey Committee published a
survey on Feb. 8 showing that 74.1% of the Tai-
wanese people, regardless of party affiliation,
supported the creation of a formal legislative
commission to monitor cross strait affairs.
The commission would supervise the Execu-
tive Yuan in matters related to cross strait con-
sultations, negotiations and exchanges, a meas-
ure with which even Legislative Yuan President
Wang Jin-Pyng agrees.
Approximately 19.4% of the survey respon-
dents opposed establishing the commission, but
there was a majority consensus, regardless of
their support for the pan-blue or pan-green
camp.
In the past, President Ma promised to allow
legislative oversight and transparency in future
ECFA talks, but there has been no legislative
oversight in any of the Chiang-Chen meetings.
From this survey result, the DPP would like to
question why President Ma Ying-jeou has been
avoiding the creation of a monitoring commis-
sion on cross strait affairs, and demands that
President Ma make a clear explanation when
discussing ECFA issues with the public.
FEBRUARY 2010
continued #om the previous page
However, the survey results also showed that
the public is still pessimistic about the Legisla-
tive Yuan ever getting the chance to monitor
cross strait affairs. Approximately 68.2% of the
population said they believed that the Legislative
Yuan cannot effectively monitor the Executive
Yuan on cross strait policy while 20.9% believed
they were capable.
When the survey respondents were asked to
express their approval regarding accepting Chi-
nese education degrees, 52.2% said they did not
approve while 42.4% said they approved, which
was a record result. If one breaks this result
down between pan-blue and pan-green support-
ers, then 80% of the pan-green supporters would
disapprove of accepting the Chinese education
policy, 51% of the independent voters and 63%
of the pan-blue voters disapprove, a historic
high.
Furthermore, 65.2% said they opposed the
policy of accepting Chinese licensed profession-
als and only 28.8% approved this policy. From
this result, it is clear that regardless of party af-
filiation, the majority of Taiwanese citizens have
doubts about this policy.
PAGE 4

U.S. arms sale to Taiwan helps de-
fend Taiwan against Chinese
threats
A Feb. 2 DPP press statement
outlined the DPP’s position
concerning the late January
announcement of U.S. arms
sales to Taiwan, sales which
caused China to raise a protest
against both the United States
and Taiwan. The press state-
ment also gave the DPP’s reac-
tion to recent comments made
by Chinese officials against
the Ma administration.
DPP Spokesperson Chuang
Suo-han said that China’s mili-
tary non-transparency has cre-
ated tremendous pressure on
Asia’s regional security, and
Beijing’s policy of aiming
more than 1,000 missiles at
Taiwan remains unchanged.
Chuang stated that China’s
complaints against the actions
to protect regional and national
security by Taiwan and the
U.S. are deeply unfounded.
DPP Spokesperson Chuang
said that the U.S. arms sale to
Taiwan does not aim to satisfy
the requests of any particular
person. He made this particu-
lar comment to respond to
China’s PLA Navy Rear Admi-
ral Yang Yi, who said, “Ma
Ying-jeou’s domestic support
rate has fallen and this caused
him to use the U.S. arms sale
to Taiwan to show the green
camp that there is a good rela-
tionship between the U.S. and
FEBRUARY 2010
Taiwan. This is actually DEMOCRACY &
stamping on one’s own foot”. PROGRESS
Chuang emphasized the Tai-
wan Relations Act has, since
PUBLISHED BY:
1979, authorized US admini-
strations to provide weapons
for Taiwan’s defense, and this Department of International
Affairs Democratic
measure’s very purpose is to
Progressive Party
protect regional peace and se-
curity in the Western Pacific
region against possible threats. 9F, No. 30, Pei-Ping East
Road, Taipei, Taiwan
Chuang Suo-han also said
that China’s reaction shows to
Ma Ying-jeou that not only Tel: 886-2-2392-9989 ext. 306
will his China-inclined policy
not bring any goodwill reac- Fax: 886-2-2393-0342
tions from China, but it will
also show that there are con- Email: foreign@dpp.org.tw
flicts of interest between Tai-
wan’s national security and
China’s military expansion. Website:
For this reason, Chuang said http://www.dpp.org.tw
that President Ma must fully
recognize the reality of truly
safeguarding Taiwan’s national DIRECTOR:
interest. Bikhim Hsiao
DEPUTY DIRECTORS:
Huang Chih-ta
Hsieh Huai-hui
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF:
Michael J. Fonte
EDITOR:
Ping-Ya Hsu
PAGE 5