News Mania / Piyal Chatterjee / 9th October 2024
China’s government claimed that Taiwan President Lai Ching-te is raising tensions with “sinister intentions” in the run-up to his major address in Taipei that may provoke a military reaction from China. China despises Lai, a “separatist,” who won the election in January and entered government in May. Lai and his administration disagree with Beijing’s assertion that democratically ruled Taiwan is its own territory.China’s Taiwan Affairs Office responded late on Tuesday to remarks made by Premier Li Keqiang over the weekend regarding Taiwan’s ancient political roots making it “impossible” for the People’s Republic of China to become the island’s motherland. Li claimed Lai was mistaking right for wrong.
“Lai Ching-te’s Taiwan independence fallacy is just old wine in a new bottle, and again exposes his obstinate stance on Taiwan independence and his sinister intentions of escalating hostility and confrontation,” it added.
On Thursday, which commemorates the fall of the last Chinese dynasty and the founding of the Republic of China in 1911, Lai will deliver his major national day speech. 1949 saw the vanquished republican government lose a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists and retreat to Taiwan. The Republic of China remains Taiwan’s formal name.The Mainland Affairs Council of Taiwan, which formulates Taiwan’s China policy, said that the People’s Republic of China has never ruled the island since 1949 as an objective reality.
“The Taiwan Affairs Office’s remarks have made Taiwan’s people see clearly that the Chinese communists regard themselves as the sole legitimate government of China and simply do not allow any room for the survival of the Republic of China,” it said.
China’s military conducts practically daily operations in and around Taiwan, most recently on Sunday. Taiwan calls these operations “joint combat readiness patrols.” In recent weeks, China has also conducted a number of additional maneuvers, such as operations in the Western Pacific with Russia and last month’s test fire of an intercontinental ballistic missile.In a statement, Taiwan’s defense ministry informed Reuters that China has been utilizing a number of justifications to “legitimize its targeted military drills.”
