Taipei: Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te on Thursday vowed to defend the self-ruled island’s sovereignty in the face of China’s “expansionist ambitions,” days after Beijing wrapped up live-fire military drills around the island.
“In the face of China’s rising expansionist ambitions, the international community is watching to see whether the Taiwanese people have the resolve to defend themselves,” Lai said in his New Year’s address.
“As president, my stance has always been clear: to firmly safeguard national sovereignty, strengthen national defence and the resilience of the whole society, and comprehensively construct an effective deterrence and democratic defence mechanism,” he added.
Lai’s comments came days after China wrapped up live-fire drills around Taiwan featuring rocket launches, aircraft and warships. Beijing had expressed anger at a planned US arms sale to Taiwan, as well as at Japan’s new leader’s comments that Tokyo could intervene in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
China sees Taiwan as its own territory and threatens to annex it by force if necessary. A former Japanese colony, Taiwan has been governed independently from the mainland since 1949, when the Nationalist Party lost a civil war against the Chinese Communist Party and retreated to the island.
Lai’s speech was met angrily in Beijing, where a spokesperson for the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office called the president “a saboteur of peace, a troublemaker and a warmonger,” according to the official Xinhua news agency.Agencies