Taiwan reunification ‘unstoppable’, Xi says in new year address

Beijing: Chinese President Xi Jinping in his New Year address on Wednesday said Taiwan’s reunification with China is “unstoppable” while projecting the country’s growing defence advances, and highlighted the construction of the world’s largest dam over Brahmaputra river.

Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait share a bond of blood and kinship, Xi said in his nationally televised 2026 New Year message.

“The reunification of our motherland, a trend of the times, is unstoppable,” Xi said amid stepped up high-powered drills by the Chinese military in the last three days around the self-governing island, which China claims as part of its mainland.

This is the sixth time since 2022 that China held intensified military drills using the latest air force jets, aircraft carriers, missiles and drones practising the capture of Taiwan.

In his address, Xi, 72, the longest-serving leader of the People’s Republic of China also sought to project advances made by Beijing in economic, defence and tech sectors.

“Construction of the hydropower project at the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo (Brahmaputra river) started,” he said, referring to the Brahmaputra dam construction.

China formally started the construction of the $170 billion dam over Brahmaputra river in ecologically fragile Tibet, closer to the Indian border in Arunachal Pradesh, which evoked concerns of flooding in the lower riparian states of India and Bangladesh.

Xi also spoke of the commissioning of China’s first aircraft carrier equipped with an electromagnetic catapult system. The ship named Fujian is the second such carrier in the world after the USS Gerald R. Ford.

“Humanoid robots did kung fu kicks, and drones performed spectacular light shows,” Xi said, referring to China’s advances in AI.

On the Chinese economy, which is struggling with slow growth of around five per cent, relying more on declining exports, Xi said China’s GDP is set to cross $20 trillion this year.

“Our economic output has crossed thresholds one after another, and it is expected to reach RMB 140 trillion yuan ($20 trillion) this year”. Agencies