China yesterday urged the world to stop drawing parallels between Taiwan and Ukraine, part of Beijing’s efforts to distance itself from Russia and portray itself as a neutral force for peace.
“China is deeply worried about the escalation of the Ukraine conflict and it possibly spiraling out of control,” Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Qin Gang (秦剛) said in remarks in Beijing to roll out Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) new “Global Security Initiative.”
“We urge certain countries to immediately stop fueling the fire, stop shifting blame to China and stop touting ‘Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow,’” Qin added.
Photo: Reuters
China in the past few days has stepped up efforts to draw a distinction between Ukraine and Taiwan, while rejecting US claims that it is privately considering providing weapons to support Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war effort.
Beijing plans to unveil a peace proposal in the coming days, an initiative met with skepticism among the US and its allies.
China’s stance has generated concern in the US and Europe.
Asked at the Munich Security Conference at the weekend whether China could reassure that audience that there would be no attack on Taiwan, Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Wang Yi (王毅) said that peace would hinge on opposing independence forces in Taiwan.
“It was never a country and it will absolutely not be a country as well,” Wang said of Taiwan. “That is the true reality of the Taiwan issue.”
Meanwhile, British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs James Cleverly on Monday said he had spoken with Qin and discussed the importance of peace in the Taiwan Strait.
“I raised China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang & the need for peace in the Taiwan Strait,” Cleverly wrote on Twitter. “We also agreed to work together to resolve issues on climate and trade.”
Qin, who was appointed as foreign minister in December last year, told Cleverly that China poses no challenge or threat to Britain, Xinhua news agency reported.
Qin said that a sound China-Britain relationship not only serves both of their interests, but also contributes to world peace and development, Xinhua said.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
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