China strongly opposes any official contact between the United States and Taiwan, a spokeswoman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's State Council said on Thursday, commenting on Taiwan Vice President William Lai's plans to meet with US officials
BEIJING (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th January, 2022) China strongly opposes any official contact between the United States and Taiwan, a spokeswoman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's State Council said on Thursday, commenting on Taiwan Vice President William Lai's plans to meet with US officials.
Earlier in the day, Taiwanese administration spokesman Zhang Dunhan said that Lai would travel to Honduras to attend the inauguration of newly-elected President Xiomara Castro later this month. On its way to Honduras, the Taiwanese delegation plans to make stopovers in the US and speak to US officials via videoconferences.
"The so-called 'stopover' of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party in the United States to establish contact with the local authorities is yet another trick of the island's administration to break away. But no tricks will change the fact that there is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is part of it," Zhu Fenglian told a press conference.
She urged the US to respect the "One China" principle and refrain from sending mixed signals to pro-independence forces in Taiwan, stressing that Beijing is strongly opposed to any official contacts between the two.
The spokeswoman advised against support of Taiwanese independence ambitions, saying that it would further destabilize the situation and backfire on Taiwan itself.
Taiwan has been governed independently from mainland China since 1949. Beijing views the island as its province, while Taiwan a territory with its own democratically elected government maintains that it is an autonomous country with political and economic relations with several other nations.
