‘Taiwan is China’s Taiwan’: Beijing says Taiwan’s ruling party not representative of popular opinion

TAIPEI – China rejected the result of Taiwan’s election on Saturday, saying its ruling Democratic Progressive Party did not represent mainstream public opinion after it failed to win a majority in presidential and legislative elections.

“Taiwan is China’s Taiwan,” Chen Binhua, spokesman for the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said on Saturday after the DPP’s Lai Ching-te emerged as the winner of the self-ruled island’s presidential race with more than 40% of the vote. popular vote.

“This election cannot change the basic pattern and development of cross-strait relations, nor can it change the common desire of compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to become closer,” Chen added, according to a translation of a CNBC report. Xinhua, the official state news agency.

Beijing has framed the self-ruled island’s election as a choice between “peace and war, prosperity and decline” – with Chinese President Xi Jinping viewing reunification with the mainland as a “historical inevitability”. Beijing has repeatedly called Lai a “stubborn Taiwan independence worker” and a dangerous separatist.

China has never relinquished its claim to Taiwan – which has been self-governing since the Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, fled to the island after being defeated in the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

The outcome of Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections is likely to shape China’s stance toward the island, while also affecting Sino-US relations and security in the broader Indo-Pacific region.