Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said on Friday that Western criticism amounts to a “trampling of Chinese sovereignty” and paves the way for “dangerous consequences”.
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 4/21/2023 at 6:41 AM, updated 4/21/2023 at 7:16 AM
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Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on April 21 in Shanghai. HECTOR RETAMAL / AFP
Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang stressed on Friday that China would make “no concessions” to Taiwan and castigated “absurd” Western criticism that could have “dangerous consequences”.
China considers Taiwan one of its provinces that it has not successfully reunified with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. The Chinese military previously conducted three-day maneuvers around the island in April in response to a meeting in the United States between Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who has angered Beijing over her Independence Party.
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“Stamping on Chinese Sovereignty”
The European Union, the United States and the G7 immediately warned Beijing, urging it to maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, which separates the island territory from mainland China. “We often hear strange gossip claiming that China is defying the rules-based international order and trying to unilaterally change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait by force or coercion,” Qin Gang said Friday. “This logic is absurd and its consequences dangerous,” he told a diplomatic forum in Shanghai, criticizing a “definition” of the status quo by Westerners that amounts to “trampling on Chinese sovereignty”.
Beijing has exerted intense military and economic pressure on Taipei since Tsai Ing-wen took power in 2016. China is dissatisfied with the rapprochement that has been underway between the Taiwanese authorities and certain Western countries, particularly the United States, in recent years and sees it as a threat to its territorial integrity. “We will not make any concessions to those who seek to undermine China’s sovereignty and security. Anyone who plays with fire on the Taiwan issue will end up getting burned,” Qin Gang said.
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In an interview with the French business newspaper Les Echos at the beginning of April, French President Emmanuel Macron called on Europe not to be a “successor” to the USA or China on the Taiwan question. “We don’t want to get into block-to-block logic,” he said in an apparent reference to Washington. His statements had been criticized by political figures on both sides of the Atlantic, who saw them as criticism of the traditional American ally.