Chinese President Xi Jinping says China would “surely be reunified” with Taiwan during his televised New Year’s address, renewing threats to take over the self-ruled island.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said China would “surely be reunified” with Taiwan during his televised New Year’s address, renewing Beijing’s threats to take over the self-ruled island, which it considers its own.

Taiwan split from China amid civil war in 1949, but Beijing continues to regard the island of 23 million with its high-tech economy as Chinese territory and has been ramping up its threat to achieve that by military force if necessary.

“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 said in his annual address, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

China has described Taiwan’s Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary elections as a choice between war and peace.

  • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    501·
    11 months ago

    That doesn’t sound right at all to me, do you have a source?

    Less than 12% of Taiwanese favour unification with China.

    EDIT: Here are a few quotes from Tsai Ing-Wen, the president of Taiwan for the past 8 years. Maybe people can make up their mind on whether the claim that ‘both’ (of the three?) parties in Taiwan want to unify with China seems to hold water:

    “We don’t have a need to declare ourselves an independent state,” Tsai told the BBC. “We are an independent country already and we call ourselves the Republic of China, Taiwan.” [source]

    The consensus of the Taiwanese people … is to defend our sovereignty and our free and democratic way of life. There is no room for compromise on this [source]

    Ever since 2016, my administration has kept its promises and maintained the status quo. We have adhered to the Four Commitments. We do not provoke, we do not act rashly, and we will absolutely not bow to pressure. [source]