Washington must stop playing with fire over Taiwan

The United States Senate Foreign Affairs Committee recently passed a bill urging the secretary of state to develop a strategy to help Taiwan regain its observer status in the World Health Organization.

By passing the bill, which is a gross violation of the one-China principle, the US Senate committee is not only throwing its weight behind "Taiwan independence" forces and provoking trouble across the Taiwan Straits, but also playing with fire.

Given that the WHO is a special United Nations' organization and its members must be UN member states, Taiwan, as an integral part of China, cannot in any way become a WHO member.

Under the Ma Ying-jeou administration, Taiwan participated in the WHO's meetings as an observer under the name of "Chinese Taipei" as a special arrangement reached between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits on the basis of the 1992 Consensus. But since the current ruling Democratic Progressive Party on the island refuses to honor the 1992 Consensus, under which both sides of the Straits belong to one China, Taiwan can no longer enjoy that status.

It's the DPP leaders who are to blame for the island losing its observer status in the WHO.

The passing of the bill by the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and its allegation that the Chinese mainland is blocking Taiwan's participation in the WHO expose the common goal of both the US administration and the DPP to further strain cross-Straits relations.

The US bill violates not only the one-China principle and the Three Joint Communiques signed by the US and China, but also the basic principles of UN Resolution 2758 and relevant WHO resolutions, and will thus come to no avail.

The move exposes the US' objective of encouraging the DPP to create trouble for the mainland, in order to contain China's peaceful rise.

The United States claims to be seeking "international space" for Taiwan, but in fact it is using Taiwan as a tool to "pull the chestnut out of the fire" and reap the benefits of cross-Straits conflicts.

The Taiwan question is China's internal affair. Any attempt by Washington to violate international law on the issue will drag it into a dangerous quagmire. And the DPP will not gain anything by continuing to be a US pawn in the latter's attempts to split the island from the motherland.