BEIJING/ TAIPEI: Taiwan is a” gypsy” that will ultimately come home and not a chess piece to be played with, the Chinese government’s top diplomat said on Monday, drawing a strong answer from the islet’s government.
China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own home and has in the once two times stepped up military and political pressure to assert its sovereignty claims, fuelling wrathfulness in Taipei and deep concern in Washington.
Speaking in Beijing, State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the cause of current pressures was the Taiwan government’s attempts to” calculate on the United States for independence” and the United States and other countries trying to” use Taiwan to control China”.
“It’s these perverse conduct that has changed the status quo and undermined the peace in the Taiwan Strait, violating the agreement of the transnational community and the introductory morals of transnational relations,” said Wang, a former head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.
To respond to this, China had taken” forceful countermeasures” to” shock the arrogance” of those who seek Taiwan’s formal independence, he said.
“Taiwan is a gypsy who’ll ultimately come home, not a chess piece to be used by others. China must and will be reunified.”
Taiwan’s China-policymaking Mainland Affairs Council said in response that the islet had noway been a part of the People’s Republic of China.
“It’s neither a gypsy nor a chess piece,” it said in a statement transferred to Reuters.
” Only the 23 million people of Taiwan have the right to decide Taiwan’s future, and absolutely won’t accept a path laid out by an autocratic political system.”
China has been particularly infuriated by support for Taiwan from the United States, the islet’s most important transnational backer, and arms supplier despite the absence of formal political ties.
Taiwan’s government has constantly denounced China’s pressure, saying that they won’t give in to pitfalls.
The defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with the Socialists, who established the People’s Republic of China.
