BEIJING: President Xi Jinping vowed on Tuesday to prevent anyone from “separating Taiwan from China by any means”, the official Xinhua news agency reported, a little more than two weeks before Taiwan is to elect a new leader. First.
Despite strong objections from the Taipei government, China views democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory and has increased military and political pressure to assert its sovereignty claims.
Taiwan holds presidential and parliamentary elections on January 13 and how the island handles relations with China is a major point of contention in the campaign.
At a symposium commemorating the 130th anniversary of the birth of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong, who defeated the Republic of China government in a civil war in 1949 and later fled to Taiwan, Xi said, “Complete reunification of the motherland is a It’s a unique trend.”
“The motherland must be reunified and will inevitably be reunified,” Xinhua quoted senior Communist Party officials as saying.
China should deepen unification between the two sides, promote the peaceful development of relations across the Taiwan Strait and “firmly prevent Taiwan from being separated from China by any means,” he said.
The report made no mention of the use of force against Taiwan, although China has never ruled out that possibility. The upcoming elections were also not mentioned in this.
China says the Taiwan election is an internal Chinese matter but the island’s people face a choice between war and peace and any attempt at Taiwan independence means war.
Over the past year and a half, China has held two rounds of major war games around Taiwan and regularly sends warships and fighter jets to the Taiwan Strait.
The Chinese government has repeatedly described Lai Ching-te of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), running to become Taiwan’s next president, as a dangerous separatist and has rejected his calls for talks.
The DPP and Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), which traditionally favors closer ties with China but denies being pro-Beijing, both say only the island’s people can decide their future.
