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07-10-2024
TAIPEI: It is “impossible” for the People’s Republic of China to become Taiwan’s motherland because Taiwan has older political roots, the island’s President Lai Ching-te said on Saturday.
Lai, who took office in May, is condemned by Beijing as a “separatist”. He rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying that the island is a country called the Republic of China, which traces its origins back to the 1911 revolution that overthrew the last imperial dynasty.
The republican government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists who set up the People’s Republic of China, which continues to claim the island as its “sacred” territory.
Speaking at a concert ahead of Taiwan’s national day celebrations on Oct. 10, Lai noted that the People’s Republic had celebrated its 75th anniversary on Oct. 1, and in a few days it would be the Republic of China’s 113th birthday.
“Therefore, in terms of age, it is absolutely impossible for the People’s Republic of China to become the ‘motherland’ of the Republic of China’s people. On the contrary, the Republic of China may be the motherland of the people of the People’s Republic of China who are over 75 years old,” Lai added, to applause.
“One of the most important meanings of these celebrations is that we must remember that we are a sovereign and independent country,” he said.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not answer calls seeking comment outside of office hours.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a speech on the eve of his country’s national day, reiterated his government’s view that Taiwan was its territory.
Lai, who will give his own keynote national day address on Oct. 10, has needled Beijing before with historical references.
Last month, Lai said that if China’s claims on Taiwan were about territorial integrity then it should also take back land from Russia signed over by the last Chinese dynasty in the 19th century.
If China’s claims on Taiwan are about territorial integrity then it should also take back land from Russia signed over by the last Chinese dynasty in the 19th century, Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said in an interview with Taiwanese media.
China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control. Taiwan’s government rejects those claims, saying only the island’s people can decide their future.
Speaking in an interview with a Taiwanese television station broadcast late on Sunday, Lai, who China calls a “separatist”, brought up the 1858 Treaty of Aigun in which China signed over a vast tract of land in what is now Russia’s far east to the Russian empire, forming much of the present day border along the Amur River.
China’s Qing dynasty, then in terminal decline, originally refused to ratify the treaty but it was affirmed two years later in the Convention of Peking, one of what China refers to as the “unequal” treaties with foreign powers in the 19th Century.
“China’s intention to attack and annex Taiwan is not because of what any one person or political party in Taiwan says or does. It is not for the sake of territorial integrity that China wants to annex Taiwan,” Lai said.
“If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t it take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the Treaty of Aigun? Russia is now at its weakest right?” he added.
“The Treaty of Aigun signed during the Qing – you can ask Russia (for the land back) but you don’t. So it’s obvious they don’t want to invade Taiwan for territorial reasons.” (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
