In New Year’s speech, Chinese president talks about reunification with Taiwan

During his televised speech New Yearthe Chinese president Xi Jinping said that China “will surely be reunited” with Taiwan, renewing Beijing’s threats to seize the autonomous island it considers its own.

Taiwan split from China amid a civil war in 1949, but Beijing still views the island of 23 million people with its high-tech economy as Chinese territory and has been escalating its threat to do so by military force if necessary. .

“China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be united by a sense of common purpose.”Xi said in his annual speech, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

China has described the January 13 presidential and parliamentary elections in Taiwan as a choice between war and peace.

Beijing considers the favorite for the Taiwanese presidency, William Lai, who currently serves as Taiwan’s vice president in the ruling People’s Democratic Party, a “separatist” and has accused him and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen of trying to provoke a Chinese attack on the island.

On Saturday, Chen Binhua, spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, called Lai a “destroyer of peace” following a televised debate Saturday in which he defended Taiwan’s right to govern itself as a democracy.

Chen said Lai’s speech at the debate was “loaded with belligerent opinions” and added that the vice president is “the instigator of a potentially dangerous war in the Taiwan Strait.”

Lai said on Saturday he was open to holding talks with Beijing “as long as there is equality and dignity on both sides of the Taiwan Strait” and stressed that Taiwan is not subordinate to China. While Lai does not describe himself as seeking independence from Beijing, he generally maintains that Taiwan is already an independent country.

Lai is running in the January 13 presidential election against candidates Hou Yu-ih of the more pro-China Kuomintang party and Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party.