China's “reunification” with Taiwan is inevitable, President Xi Jinping said in his New Year's speech on Sunday, December 31, in a stronger tone than last year, less than two weeks before the island, claimed for China, elect a new leader.
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The presidential and parliamentary elections on January 13 will be held at a time of tense relations between Beijing and Taipei. China has stepped up military pressure to assert its sovereignty claims over democratically governed Taiwan.
China considers Taiwan its “sacred territory” and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under Chinese control, although Xi made no mention of military threats in his speech broadcast on state television.
“The reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability,” Xi said, although the official English translation of his remarks published by the Xinhua news agency used a simpler phrase: “China will surely be reunified” and added:
Compatriots (all Chinese) on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be united by a common sense of purpose and share the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation
Last year, Xi simply said that people on both sides of the Strait are “members of the same family” and that he hoped people on both sides would work together to “jointly foster the lasting prosperity of the Chinese nation.”
China considers current Vice President Lai Ching-te, presidential candidate of the ruling Taiwan Democratic Party and leader in opinion polls by varying margins, a dangerous separatist.
So, in response to Lai's comments in a live televised presidential debate late on Saturday, December 30, China's Taiwan Affairs Office stated that Lai had “exposed his true colors as a stubborn 'worker for Taiwan independence' and destroyer of peace in the Taiwan Strait.”
“His words were full of confrontational thoughts,” spokesman Chen Binhua said in a statement.
Since 2016 – when President Tsai Ing-wen took office – the government led by the ruling Taiwan Democratic Party has promoted separatism and is the “criminal mastermind” in obstructing cross-strait exchanges and damaging the interests of the people of Taiwan, Chen said.
“As a leading figure in the Taiwan Democratic Party authorities and its current president, Lai Ching-te cannot evade his responsibility in this matter,” he added.
Tsai and Lai have repeatedly offered to hold talks with China but have been rebuffed.
The Democratic Party claims that only the people of Taiwan can decide its future, and so does Lai's opponent in the election, Hou Yu-ih of the Kuomintang, the largest Taiwanese opposition party, which is traditionally in favor of closer ties. with China, but flatly denies being pro-Beijing. Hou has also denounced Lai as a supporter of independence.
The defeated ROC government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war against Mao Zedong's communists, who founded the People's Republic of China, and sees itself as an independent, democratically governed country, but has never declared officially its independence from China. The Republic of China remains the formal name of Taiwan and is seen as a rebellious province for China.
Lai said Saturday that the ROC and the People's Republic of China “are not subordinate to each other,” an expression that both he and Tsai have used before and that has also irritated Beijing.
With Reuters and local media
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