Mass rally in Taiwan takes aim at China, contaminated food

TAIPEI, Oct. 25 Kyodo - Hundreds of thousands of protesters fed up with toxic food products from China
and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou took to the streets of Taipei on Saturday
in a rally held by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party.
Waving banners and blaring air horns, some 500,000 anti-China protesters,
according to organizers, thronged the capital near the Presidential Office,
just days before landmark talks on economic cooperation between Taipei and
Beijing on the island.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Justice Ministry official here estimated
the crowd at about 200,000 people, while the Taipei City Police Department
declined to provide a separate crowd estimate.
''Our sovereignty has been to a certain extent damaged and this is something we
want to tell China,'' said DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ying-wen before the rally.
The rally also comes amid a string of recalls of Chinese food products tainted
with the industrial chemical melamine. A handful of people were sickened by
contaminated products and the food industry was rattled.
Melamine was covertly used to boost protein level figures in watered-down milk
in China, sickening tens of thousands of infants, of whom at least four have
died after developing kidney stones.
Local recalls and the discovery of melamine in China-imported foods have
whipped up anti-China sentiment ahead of the island's negotiations with Beijing
on Nov. 3, casting a pall over security and Ma's ability to push for further
economic cooperation across the Taiwan Strait.
China and Taiwan have been governed separately since 1949, when the two split
amid civil war, and Beijing views the self-ruled island as a breakaway province
that should be reunited, by force if necessary.
But cross-strait ties have warmed dramatically since Ma took office May 20 and
toned down Taipei's independence-leaning rhetoric. Within a month of his
inauguration, Ma ushered in the first round of formal cross-strait talks in a
decade and inked pacts with Beijing on aviation and tourism links.
The upcoming negotiations would be a continuation of those talks and mark the
highest-level meeting between Taiwan and China ever to be held on the island.
The two sides are expected to discuss the issue of food safety, with Taipei
likely demanding an apology from the Chinese delegation over the toxic products
scandal in Taiwan. Other issues to be discussed are the establishment of cargo
links across the strait and expansion of current air links.
Besides slamming China for exporting tainted food products to Taiwan,
protesters called for Ma to halt what the DPP claims is his nudging the island
toward unification with the mainland. Ma has proposed allowing Chinese students
to study at local universities and to further link up the two sides' economies
as a means to weather to global credit crunch.
Ma faces rock-bottom poll ratings of less than 25 percent, as he tries to
salvage his cross-strait policies and the economy.
The island's main stock market index has shed nearly half its value since Ma
took office, while unemployment has inched past 4 percent amid inflation and
downgrades of gross domestic product projections this year.
==Kyodo