Chinese Parliament Opens With Taiwan Warning

China's premier, Wen Jiabao, opened the annual session of the country's parliament today with a stern warning to Taiwan against moves towards independence.

"We will unite with Taiwanese compatriots in firm opposition to all forms of secessionist activities such as calls for Taiwanese independence through legislation," he told the National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing.

Mr Wen's comments - coming a day after Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, angered China by again expressing his desire for formal independence - prompted fervent applause from the near-3,000 delegates inside the Great Hall of the People for the gathering of the country's toothless legislature, which rubber-stamps Communist party policy.

The premier's stance was echoed by China's foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing. "Whoever wants independence will become a criminal in history," he told reporters.

Such sabre-rattling by China towards its island neighbour, which has enjoyed de facto independence since nationalist forces fled there in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong's Communists, is traditional at the start of set-piece events such as the opening of the NPC.

However, this time Mr Wen's comments came as China announced it will increase military spending by 17.8% this year, and just a day after a speech by Mr Chen which appeared specifically intended to raise hackles in Beijing.

"Taiwan should be independent," the president told political supporters. "Taiwan is a country whose sovereignty lies outside the People's Republic of China."

Mr Chen has regularly enraged China with talk of Taiwan's future sovereignty since first being elected in 2000.

Beijing has repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan should the island make a formal declaration of independence.

Mr Chen's comments, and the robust Chinese response, alarmed investors in Taiwan, which has enjoyed ever-increasing business links with the mainland in recent years.

Taipei's stock market slid 3.7% today, the largest one-day points decline in nearly three years.

Among the hardest-hit stocks were those in the tourism industry, which is hoping to attract greater numbers of Chinese visitors.

Any crisis over Taiwan would also have wider international implications. While Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, it is obliged under US law to help Taiwan if the island is attacked, and has warned Mr Chen against provoking the mainland.

Elsewhere in his two-and-a-quarter-hour speech to the NPC, Mr Wen spoke of the government's keenness to reduce the great economic divisions between China's thriving cities and its struggling rural interior.

"Protect social equity and justice, and let all the people together enjoy the fruits of reform and development," he said, announcing a 15% increase in government spending on countryside services.

Tackling China's ever widening urban-rural divide - which has prompted many millions of people from the countryside to head to the cities looking for work - has been identified as a major aim, both by Mr Wen and the country's president, Hu Jintao, who also heads the all-powerful Communist party.

While the NPC still has many of the surface trappings of communism, taking place under the giant red star in the ceiling of the Great Hall of the People, the policy it endorses has increasingly little to do with the ideology.

Among one bill being submitted to this session is a measure to protect private property, the first of its type since the Communists seized power and nationalised assets in 1949.