President Hu Jintao said in Beijing Friday that the Chinese people will do their best to seek peaceful reunification of the motherland but will never tolerate "Taiwan independence".
  
"We will continue to make our greatest efforts with the utmost sincerity to seek the prospects of peaceful reunification. Meanwhile, we will never tolerate 'Taiwan independence' and never allow the 'Taiwan independence' secessionist forces to make Taiwan secede from the motherland under any name or by any means," said Hu, while joining in a joint panel discussion of CPPCC members representing the Taiwan region Friday afternoon.
  
China's top advisory body, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) is now in an annual full session of its 2,000-strong-member National Committee in Beijing.
  
"Tremendous and complicated changes have taken place on the Taiwan island in recent years, and the intensified activities of the 'Taiwan independence' secessionist forces have posed a grave impact on the peaceful and stable development of across-Straits relations," said Hu, citing the Taiwan authorities' pursuit of a "creeping independence" by means of "rectification of Taiwan's name" and "desinification".
  
"The Taiwan authorities have deliberately provoked antagonism across the Taiwan Straits and tried every means to undermine the status quo that the mainland and Taiwan belong to one and the same China," said Hu.
  
Evidence has shown that the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces and their activities are increasingly becoming the "biggest obstacle for the development of cross-Straits relations" and the "biggest real threat to peace and stability in the region around the Taiwan Straits", the president said.
  
"If we do not oppose and check the 'Taiwan independence' secessionist forces and their activities resolutely, they will certainly pose a severe threat to China's national sovereignty and territorial integrity, ruin the prospects of peaceful reunification, and harm the fundamental interests of the Chinese nation," he added.

(Xinhua News Agency March 4, 2005)