BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping mentioned China would “surely be reunified” with Taiwan throughout his televised New Year’s handle, renewing Beijing’s threats to take over the self-ruled island, which it considers its personal.
Taiwan break up from China amid civil struggle in 1949, however Beijing continues to treat the island of 23 million with its high-tech financial system as Chinese territory and has been ramping up its risk to realize that by army power if crucial.
“China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose,” Xi mentioned in his annual handle, in keeping with the official Xinhua News Agency.
China has described Taiwan‘s Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary elections as a choice between war and peace.
Beijing considers the presidential front-runner, William Lai, who currently serves as vice president from the ruling Democratic People’s Party, a “separatist” and has accused him and Taiwan‘s President Tsai Ing-wen of trying to provoke a Chinese attack on the island.
On Saturday, Chen Binhua, spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, known as Lai a “destroyer of peace” following a televised debate earlier that day wherein Lai defended Taiwan’s proper to rule itself as a democracy.
Chen mentioned Lai’s discourse on the debate was “full of confrontational thinking,” including that the vp is “the instigator of a potential dangerous war in the Taiwan Strait.”
Lai had mentioned in the course of the debate that Taiwan is just not subordinate to China and that he was open to communications with Beijing “as long as there is equality and dignity on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.” While Lai doesn’t describe himself as looking for independence from Beijing, he typically maintains Taiwan is already an unbiased nation.
Lai’s election rivals embody Hou Yu-ih from the extra China-friendly Kuomintang celebration, and Ko Wen-je from the Taiwan People’s Party.
