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Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te has urged Beijing to co-operate with Taipei and the international community to maintain peace and tackle shared challenges as he seeks to build support at home and abroad in the face of Chinese threats.
In his first National Day address since taking office in May, Lai asserted that the People’s Republic of China had “no right to represent Taiwan” but said he was willing to work with China to protect peace and prosperity for people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
“Countries around the world have supported China, invested in China and assisted China in . . . promoting China’s economic development and enhancing its national strength,” Lai said. “This was done out of the hope that China would join the rest of the world in making global contributions . . . and that externally it would maintain peace.”
Making reference to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, he added: “We hope that China will live up to the expectations of the international community . . . that it will take up its international responsibilities and, along with Taiwan, contribute to the peace, security and prosperity of the region and the globe.”
A senior official in Lai’s administration said that by speaking about China in positive terms, the president was signaling goodwill towards Beijing.
But China’s foreign ministry on Thursday accused Lai of “deliberately severing the historical connection” between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Spokesperson Mao Ning said Lai was “peddled the absurd ideology of Taiwan independence with new tricks”, pointing to his insistence on sovereignty.
Foreign diplomats in Taipei said Lai’s speech was more restrained than his inaugural address, which Beijing called provocative and reacted to with “punishment” exercises. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to annex it with military force if Taipei indefinitely resists its control.
China has not previously responded to a Taiwan president’s national address with military moves, and Beijing has not announced new drills. But national security officials in Taiwan and two other democratic countries who wished not to be named said there were indications that the Chinese military was prepared to stage a sequel to the May drills.
The US urged Beijing to exercise restraint. “There is no justification for a routine annual celebration to be used as a pretext for military exercises,” said a senior US official.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said it observed 27 Chinese military aircraft, nine Chinese warships and five other official Chinese vessels participating in joint combat patrols in the vicinity of its waters and airspace in the 24 hours to Thursday morning. Fifteen of the military aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, a self-declared early-warning buffer zone.
Taiwanese officials said Lai’s speech was meant to be consistent with his inaugural address, in which he promised to “neither yield nor provoke, and maintain the status quo” across the Taiwan Strait.
However, he put a stronger emphasis on the Republic of China, the state founded in China in 1911 following the first Chinese revolution, which was brought to Taiwan by the nationalist Kuomintang after the end of Japanese rule in 1945. The ROC was overthrown in China by the Communist revolution in 1949 but has continued to exist in Taiwan.
Lai hailed the ROC founders’ dream of establishing “a democratic republic . . . a nation of freedom, equality and benevolence”. But he lamented that their project was “engulfed in the raging flames of war” and “eroded under authoritarian rule”, a reference to Taiwan’s decades of military dictatorship under the KMT.
Taiwanese officials argue that Lai’s focus on the ROC robs Beijing of the opportunity to label him a “Taiwan independence separatist” because it acknowledges the Chinese roots of the state that survives in Taiwan today.
But he also made a strong appeal to his Taiwanese compatriots to unite in defending their de facto independent nation.
“The Republic of China has already put down roots . . . And the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other,” he said.
“Regardless of what name we choose to call our nation — the Republic of China, Taiwan or the Republic of China Taiwan — we must all share common convictions. Our determination to defend our national sovereignty remains unchanged.”
Additional reporting by Tina Hu in Beijing