Hopes of a Taiwan-China summit akin to a US-North Korea summit on Tuesday were “wishful thinking” and “mysterious logic,” China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesman Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光) said yesterday.
Following US President Donald Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, some media outlets have reported that similar summits with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) could end tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
Local media have quoted Democratic Progressive Party sources as saying that the US would get involved in Taiwan-China relations in support of the party to ease tensions between the two nations.
Such reports demonstrate a gross misunderstanding of international circumstances, Ma said, adding that they were misleading the Taiwanese public.
Supporters of Taiwanese independence are the greatest threat to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, as well as the greatest cause of harm to Taiwanese “compatriots,” he said.
“We have staunch determination, ample willpower and sufficient ability to thwart any conspiracies to split Taiwan away from [China]. We will defend the nation’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Ma said.
Asked if the leaders from both sides of the Taiwan Strait would meet, Ma was evasive, saying that the “Taiwan problem” was an internal issue and completely different from the relationship between the US and North Korea.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) refusal to acknowledge the “1992 consensus,” which is the embodiment of the “one China” principle, has caused a serious regression in cross-strait ties, he said.
The so-called “1992 consensus,” a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) in 2006 admitted making up in 2000, refers to a tacit understanding between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese government that both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledge that there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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