China on Monday accused Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te of spreading “heresy,” fuelling hostility and provocation, after he declared the island is “of course” a country, citing historical and legal evidence to support his claim.
Beijing says democratically governed Taiwan is “sacred” Chinese territory that has belonged to China since ancient times, and that the island is one of its provinces with no right to be called a state.
Lai and his government strongly reject that view, and have offered talks with China multiple times, but have been rejected. China calls Lai a separatist.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, responding to Lai’s Sunday evening speech, said he had intentionally distorted history to promote his Taiwan independence agenda and that the island has never been a country.
“It was a ‘Taiwan independence’ declaration that blatantly incited cross-strait confrontation, and a hodgepodge of ‘Taiwan independence’ fallacies and heresies full of errors and omissions,” it said in a statement.
“The fallacies fabricated by Lai Ching-te in contravention of history, reality and jurisprudence will only be swept into the rubbish heap of history.”
Taipei Rejects Beijing’s Claims
Responding, Taiwan’s China-policy making Mainland Affairs Council said Lai was simply stating historical facts and Beijing’s belief that the island has been Chinese since ancient times and is not a country is “just a fabricated lie without any basis”.
“We call on the Chinese communist authorities to face up to the fact that the Republic of China objectively exists and the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, that ‘the two sides are not subordinate to each other’,” it added in a statement.
In 1949, the Republic of China government fled to Taiwan after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists, and that remains the island’s formal name.
Lai has repeatedly said that only Taiwan’s people can decide their future, and that, as the People’s Republic of China has never ruled the island, it has no right to claim it or speak on its behalf.
Taiwan has, over the past five years, faced stepped-up military and political pressure from China, including war games.
(With inputs from Reuters)
