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03-12-2024
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has arrived in the US state of Hawaii for a two-day visit, drawing a furious reaction from China.
The trip is being billed as a stopover as part of a Pacific tour, but comes amid long-running tensions between the US and China and growing concerns about the possibility of conflict over Taiwan.
After arriving in Hawaii, Lai said war would have “no winners” and that “we have to fight together to prevent war”.
China’s foreign ministry said it “strongly condemns” the visit and that it had “lodged serious protests with the US”.
China considers Taiwan which broke away in 1949 following the Chinese Civil War to be part of its own territory, and opposes any diplomatic engagement with it by other countries.
The US has long maintained a deliberately ambiguous policy towards the island, declining to recognise its independence but maintaining informal relations with its government.
Speaking before his departure for Hawaii, Lai said the trip marked “the beginning of a new era of value-based diplomacy”.
“Democracy, prosperity and peace are the expectations of the people of Taiwan, and they are also the values that I, as president, must actively promote,” he said.
He said he wanted to show the world that Taiwan is “not only a model of democracy, but also a key force in promoting global peace, stability, and prosperity”.
Speaking at a dinner on Saturday attended by state officials, members of Congress, and Taiwanese residents of Hawaii, he added that a visit that day to Pearl Harbour whose bombing by Japan in 1941 brought the US into the Second World War had served as a reminder of “the importance of ensuring peace”.
“Peace is priceless, and war has no winners. We have to fight, fight together to prevent war,” he said.
The rest of the trip will see Lai visit Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, and Palau, the only Pacific island nations among the 12 countries that recognise Taiwan’s independence. He will also stop for one night in the US territory of Guam.
In a statement ahead of the trip, a spokesperson for the Chinese defence ministry said China would “firmly oppose official interaction with China’s Taiwan region in any form” and “resolutely crush” attempts secure Taiwanese independence.
China has launched major military drills around Taiwan for the second time this year, simulating a full-scale attack on the island just days after the Taiwanese President William Lai delivered his first National Day speech.
They come months after drills held, days after Lai was sworn in.
The exercises reinforce what is at the heart of the issue: China’s claim over self-governed Taiwan.
Beijing sees the island as a breakaway province that will, eventually, be part of the country, and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve this but many Taiwanese consider themselves to be part of a separate nation although most are in favour of maintaining the status quo where Taiwan neither declares independence from China nor unites with it.
Taiwan’s first known settlers were Austronesian tribal people, believed to have come from modern day southern China.
Chinese records appear to first mention the island in AD239, when an emperor dispatched an expeditionary force to it, a fact Beijing uses to back its territorial claim. After a relatively brief spell as a Dutch colony, Taiwan was administered by China’s Qing dynasty, before it was ceded to Tokyo after Japan won the First Sino-Japanese War. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
