Taiwan to face punishment from China

Beijing, April 6 – China regards the Taiwan president’s transit trip to the United States as another provocation, and Beijing will take decisive measures to punish Taiwanese separatists, the Taiwan Affairs Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee said in a statement Thursday.

Earlier Wednesday, Taiwan’s Chief of Staff Tsai Ing-wen, who is returning to the island after visiting Taipei-friendly Guatemala while transiting the United States, met with Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy.

“This is another provocative move by the leadership of the Taiwanese Democratic Progressive Party to collude with the United States and rely on Washington’s support for independence. We strongly condemn and intend to take strong measures to punish the pro-Taiwan independence separatist forces,” a statement said.

It should also be noted that Beijing intends to resolutely safeguard China’s state sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The situation around Taiwan escalated dramatically after a visit to the island in early August last year by then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. China, which considers the island one of its provinces, condemned Pelosi’s visit, seeing in this move the United States’ support for Taiwanese separatism, and conducted large-scale military exercises.

Official relations between the central government of the People’s Republic of China and its island province ceased in 1949 after Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT forces were defeated in a civil war with the Chinese Communist Party, and moved to Taiwan. Commercial and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the parties have started contacting through NGOs – the Beijing Association for the Development of Relationships Across the Taiwan Straits and the Taipei Cross-Strait Exchange Foundation.