Taiwan’s unification with the mainland is ‘inevitable’: Xi Jinping

Beijing, Jan 2: China’s President Xi Jinping warns against any efforts to promote Taiwan’s independence.

President Jinping said, “Taiwan’s unification with the mainland is ‘inevitable’”- any efforts to promote the island’s independence and saying China would not renounce the option of using military force to bring it into the fold.

One day ahead of Mr. Xi’s speech, Taiwan president Tsai-Ing-Wen said, Beijing should respect the insistence of 23 million people on freedom and democracy and accept the existence of Taiwan and use peaceful means to resolve its differences.

Xi pronounced unification under a “one country, two systems” approach that would ‘safeguard the interests and well-being of Taiwanese compatriots.’

Beijing has implemented a multi-pronged approach to diminish Taiwan’s presence on the international stage in recent years, including blocking it from global forums and poaching its diminishing number of official diplomatic allies.

Taiwan is a self-governed democracy and for all practical purpose has acted as an independent nation since 1950, when China’s nationalist government was defended by communist forces, has never declared formal independence from the mainland, but China stubbornly considers the island to be the apostate province, not a country in its own right.

China has also successfully pressured global firms to list Taiwan as a part of China on their company websites.