China is the real threat to security and is hypocritically claiming to uphold UN principles of peace, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday in a rebuff to comments by China’s top diplomat at the Munich Security Conference.
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅), addressing the annual security conference on Saturday, said that some countries were “trying to split Taiwan from China,” blamed Japan for tensions over the nation and underscored the importance of upholding the UN Charter.
In Taipei, Lin said through a statement yesterday that “the Republic of China [ROC, Taiwan] is a sovereign and independent country, and it is not subordinate to the People’s Republic of China [PRC].”
Photo: Ann Wang, REUTERS
“Whether viewed from historical facts, objective reality, or under international law, Taiwan’s sovereignty has never belonged to the PRC,” it said. “Only Taiwan’s 23 million people have the right to decide Taiwan’s future. Any attempt to distort Taiwan’s sovereign status will not change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait or the internationally recognized objective facts.”
Lin said that Wang had “boasted” of upholding the purposes of the UN Charter and had blamed other countries for regional tensions.
“In fact, China has recently engaged in military provocations in surrounding areas and has repeatedly and openly violated UN Charter principles on refraining from the use of force or the threat of force,” Lin said.
This “once again exposes a hegemonic mindset that does not match its words with its actions,” he added.
China’s military, which operates daily around Taiwan, staged its latest round of mass war games near Taiwan in December last year.
China says Taiwan was “returned” to Chinese rule by Japan at the end of World War II in 1945.
The government in Taipei says the island was handed over to the ROC, not the PRC, which did not yet exist, and Beijing has no right to claim sovereignty.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) communists. The ROC remains the nation’s formal name.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday urged Beijing to acknowledge the reality of the ROC’s existence, safeguard regional peace and stability, and stop what it described as efforts to mislead the international community and engage in baseless provocations.
“Cross-strait relations can only improve if Beijing adopts a pragmatic, rational approach and enters into respectful, equal dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected government,” it said.
It also called on the international community to continue backing democratic Taiwan with concrete actions, and to condemn China’s repeated attempts to unilaterally change the “status quo” and intimidate other countries through coercion and military pressure.
Taiwan will stand united with its democratic partners under a “democracy protection umbrella,” confronting authoritarian challenges, defending shared values and the rules-based international order, and working together to preserve peace in the Taiwan Strait and security across the Indo-Pacific region, it said.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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