On 2 January, the head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office urged the people of Taiwan to promote the process of “peaceful reunification.”
Mr Song Tao’s message followed remarks by Chinese President Xi Jinping in his New Year address about the inevitability of China’s “reunification” with Taiwan. Mr Song said in his New Year’s message on his office’s website:
“The motherland will eventually be reunified, and it will inevitably be reunified.”
This is the common desire and common mission of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, Mr Song added. The people of Taiwan should “promote the return of cross-Strait relations to the right path of peaceful development and push forward the process of peaceful reunification of the motherland,” he said.
China regards self-governing Taiwan as its territory that should be reunified with it. Taiwan rejects China’s claims of sovereignty. Both the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the largest opposition party, the Kuomintang, maintain that only the people of Taiwan can decide their own future.
Mr Song reiterated that China supports the idea of “one country, two systems” and opposes formal independence for Taiwan or “interference by outside forces”. His message did not mention the election, which the Taiwan Affairs Office presented as a choice between war and peace.
In August 2022, when Tsai hosted US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a visit to Taiwan, China surrounded the island for several days with large-scale military exercises and cut off high-level military communications with the US military.
That communication channel was only reopened last week after more than a year of cautious diplomacy, including the Xi-Biden summit.
The US maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan and adheres to the “one China” policy.
Under the policy, the US recognises China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but Washington has never formally recognised Beijing’s claim to the island of 23 million people. It is also legally obliged to provide the democratic island with the means for self-defence.
