After Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Taiwan is a “wanderer” who will eventually “return home”, Taiwan slammed the stance Re-emphasising on the unification of China, the country’s top diplomat also said that Taiwan “should not be used as a pawn”.
Wang was speaking during an opening ceremony at a Beijing-based symposium on international affairs and China’s diplomacy in 2021.
On Taiwan-US ties, Wang said that the cause of current tensions was the Taiwan government’s attempts to “rely on the United States for independence”
“It is these perverse actions that have changed the status quo and undermined the peace in the Taiwan Strait, violating the consensus of the international community and the basic norms of international relations,” said Wang, who is a former head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.
Meanwhile, reacting to Wang’s statement, Taiwan’s China-policymaking Mainland Affairs Council said that the island had never been a part of the People’s Republic of China.
“It is neither a wanderer nor a chess piece. Only the 23 million people of Taiwan have the right to decide Taiwan’s future, and absolutely will not accept a path laid out by an autocratic political system,” it said in a statement sent to Reuters.
China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has in the past two years increased military and diplomatic pressure to assert its sovereignty claims.