Taiwan President Says China’s Military Expansion Could Destabilize Asia
China cut off official communication channels with the Tsai administration last year after she declined to accede to Beijing’s demand
that she accept the so-called 1992 Consensus, which posits that mainland China and Taiwan are part of "one China." Since then, Beijing has ratcheted up diplomatic pressure by poaching Taiwan’s few remaining diplomatic partners and blocking its observer status in international organizations, especially those under the United Nations.
29, 2017
TAOYUAN, Taiwan — China’s increasing military projection around East Asia is undermining regional stability, Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen,
said at a year-end news conference on Friday just days after Beijing reiterated its goal of annexing the self-ruled democracy.
Speaking at a Chinese Embassy event in Washington this month, Li Kexin, an embassy minister, said he had told American officials
that if United States Navy vessels visited Taiwan’s southern port in Kaohsiung, China would attack the island with the aim of unification.
Taiwan’s government, the Republic of China, presided over all of China until it was vanquished
by the Communist forces of Mao Zedong, who founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
An Fengshan, a spokesman for the mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said this week
that Taiwan’s "reunification" with China — Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic — was inevitable because of the growing cross-strait military imbalance.
On Friday, Ms. Tsai reiterated her pledge to increase Taiwan’s military spending
and military development capabilities in the face of the threat from Beijing.