The Ministry of Foreign Affairs today condemned China for distorting facts and belittling Taiwan’s sovereignty in response to China’s Taiwan Affairs Office’s (TAO) accusation of being a “trouble-maker.”
The Chinese government is the so-called “trouble-maker,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said.
Peace in the Taiwan Strait has been the international community’s huge concern, especially after China has held large-scale military exercises around Taiwan in recent years, Hsiao said.
Photo: Taipei Times
These military activities are detrimental to stability, raise tensions in the Strait and endanger global peace and prosperity, he said.
Taiwan intends to safeguard its sovereignty, democracy and freedom, while also continuing to deepen its ties with democratic allies to curb authoritarian expansion and to guard peace and stability and the Strait and freedom, openness and prosperity and the Indo-Pacific region, he said.
The foreign ministry’s remark came after China’s TAO spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) last night criticized President William Lai’s (賴清德) speech at the opening ceremony of the annual Ketagalan Forum.
On Tuesday, Lai told the forum, which gathers leaders from around the world, including from the US, the UK, Canada and France, that China’s military activities in the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea and the South China Sea are bringing unprecedented challenges to the rules-based world order.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is still ongoing and the conflicts in the Middle East are intensifying, democratic countries should unite to safeguard democracy and freedom in the face of authoritarian expansion, Lai said.
Lai pledged to raise Taiwan’s national defense budget to reach a target of over 3 percent of GDP and enhance the nation’s whole-of-society defense and resilience.
Zhu was quoted by the Chinese state media Xinhua as saying that "Taiwan independence” separatist forces are colluding with external powers to repeatedly provoke situations aimed at achieving independence.
Lai once again exposed his true nature as a "saboteur of peace, peddler of war, and troublemaker," Zhu was quoted as saying.
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