Taiwan leader’s New Year address warns China must avoid ‘military adventurism’ – National | Globalnews.ca

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen marked the new year with a message for China: military conflict is not the answer.

“We must remind the Beijing authorities to not misjudge the situation and to prevent the internal expansion of ‘military adventurism’,” Tsai said on Saturday in her New Year’s speech broadcast live on Facebook.

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has increased military and diplomatic pressure in the past two years to assert its sovereignty claims.

Read more:

China warns of ‘drastic measures’ if Taiwan moves towards independence

In Chinese President Xi Jinping’s New Year address the day before, he said the complete unification of “the motherland” was an aspiration shared by people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Story continues below advertisement

Taiwan says it is an independent country and has repeatedly vowed to defend its freedom and democracy.

“The military is definitely not an option for solving cross-strait disagreements. Military conflicts would impact economic stability,” Tsai said. “Our two sides jointly shoulder the responsibility of maintaining regional peace and stability.”

Taiwan’s stance has always been “to not succumb when facing pressure and to not rashly advance when receiving support,” Tsai said.


Click to play video: 'Taiwan president vows to uphold ‘democracy and freedom’'







Taiwan president vows to uphold ‘democracy and freedom’


Taiwan president vows to uphold ‘democracy and freedom’ – Oct 9, 2021

To ease tension in the region, both Taipei and Beijing must “work hard to take care of people’s livelihoods and calm the hearts of the people” in order to find peaceful solutions to problems together, Tsai said.

Tsai also said Taiwan would continue to monitor the situation in Hong Kong, adding that interference in the recent legislative election and the arrests this week of senior staff at the pro-democracy media outlet Stand News “made people worry even more about human rights and freedom of speech in Hong Kong.”

Story continues below advertisement

Steady governance is Taiwan’s most important goal in 2022, Tsai said.

“We will hold fast to our sovereignty, uphold the values​​of freedom and democracy, defend territorial sovereignty and national security, and maintain peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.”

(Reporting by Sarah Wu; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Kim Coghill)




For all the latest World News Click Here 

 For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! TheDailyCheck is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected] The content will be deleted within 24 hours.