Taiwan wants peace and dialogue with China, but the government must continue to strengthen the defense of the island, said President Lai Ching-Te while completing a year in office.
China calls LAI a “separatist” and has rejected his multiple conversations offers.
Lai rejects China’s claims about the democratic and separately controlled island and says that only Taiwan’s people can determine their future.
The government has warned that Beijing could mark the birthday with military exercises, but that he spoke to reporters from the presidential office in Central Taipei, Lai offered a message of peace.
“I am also dedicated to peace. Because peace is priceless and war has no winners. But when it comes to looking for peace, we cannot have dreams or illusions,” “
he said.
Taiwan will continue to strengthen his defense, because preparing war is the best way to avoid this, Lai added.
“I also repeat here – Taiwan is happy to have exchanges and cooperation with China as long as there is mutual dignity. Use exchanges to replace the purification in, dialogue to replace confrontation.”
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office On Tuesday, Lai’s speech called a “dual tactic” that is “waste of effort and doomed”.
“It doesn’t matter what the leaders of the Taiwan region say or how they say it, it can’t change that Taiwan is part of China … nor can it stop the inevitable trend of national reunification,” said the spokesperson for the Chen Binhua office in a statement.
The Chinese Ministry of Defense said last week that Lai was a “Taiwan Strait crisis maker” that had increased antagonism and confrontation and had undermined peace and stability.
Lai also stands for a challenge of possible American rates, which are currently pausing, and said that conversations with Washington continue “smoothly”.
The government is also planning to set up a sovereign asset fund to stimulate the technology -oriented economy, he added.
“The government will set up a sovereign fund to create a national investment platform, making the industrial strengths of Taiwan, led by the government, full use, in collaboration with the strengths of private companies,” Lai said without giving details.
Taiwan on high alert after Chinese had been detected militarily
In a daily report on Chinese military activities, the Ministry of Defense of Taiwan said in the last 24 hours that it had discovered six Chinese planes and 11 ships near the island.
The Coast Guard of Taiwan has also documented five things in which 38 Chinese citizens cross the 160 kilometer wide Taiwan-Zeestraat, which separate the self-controlling island democracy from the authoritarian Chinese mainland, according to the deputy director-general HSIEH Ching-Chin of the body.
This includes at least one case posted on Douyin, the Chinese version of Tiktok, in which a man who speaks with a strong Chinese accent of the mainland, plants a Chinese flag on what he says is a Taiwanese beach.
Scenes in the background seem to show a stretch line south of the capital Taipei.
The small size of the boats, some of those toys used for pleasure on the beach, makes it difficult for Taiwan’s radar to pick them up.
More cameras and other detection devices and manpower would be needed to cover the enormous spaces of inhospitable coastline around the island, but the site would make a Chinese D-Day type landing very challenging.
ABC/wires
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