In the heightened tensions surrounding Taiwan, China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping has called for “reunification”. An association with “peaceful means” would best serve the interests of the entire Chinese nation, said the President on Saturday at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People. The occasion was the 110th anniversary of the revolution of 1911, to which both today’s Communist People’s Republic and the Republic of China, founded at the time and still existing in Taiwan, refer.
“Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should stand on the right side of history and unite to achieve the complete reunification and renewal of the Chinese nation,” the Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying. With a view to the independence will of today’s democratic Taiwan, Xi Jinping said: “Those who forget their heritage, betray their fatherland and try to divide the country will come to a bad end.”
“Purely internal matter of China”
Without naming the USA, which has committed itself to Taiwan’s defense capability and supplies weapons, the president warned against foreign interference: “The Taiwan question is a purely internal matter for China.” His warning and appeal to the 23 million Taiwanese come against the background of an escalation of the conflict, as China has been increasing military pressure for weeks. Beijing is also upset that the US has taken its relationship with liberal Taiwan to a higher level.
In the 1911 revolution, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown and the Republic of China was founded under Sun Yat-sen. In the later civil war, however, the communists prevailed and the national Chinese Kuomintang party fled with the government to Taiwan. The island regards itself today as independent, but continues to call itself the Republic of China and celebrates the anniversary of the revolution on Sunday with its national holiday. The communist leadership in Beijing, on the other hand, sees Taiwan only as an “inseparable part” of the People’s Republic, which was founded in 1949, and threatens a violent conquest for “reunification”.