Appearing live before the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday for the first time since the Covid outbreak, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi reinforced China’s claim that the People’s Republic of China is the governing body of Taiwan and that interference from anyone attempting to stop reunification would result in that entity being “crushed by the wheels of history.” The statement comes nearly a week after US President Joe Biden said during a 60 Minutes interview that US troops would defend Taiwan if China were to initiate conflict in Taiwan.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has not wavered about Taiwan. Their belief is that the independently governed island has always belonged to China. “Only when China is fully reunified can there be true peace across the Taiwan Strait,” Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said at the U.N. General Assembly. He said Beijing would “take the most forceful steps to oppose external interference.”
Taiwan has been under independent rule since the civil war of 1949. A small number if countries have chosen to do business with Taipei rather than with mainland China. The PRC has been known to exert political and often economic pressure any country, company, government, or world leader who chooses to take sides or who recognizes Taiwan as an independent country.
The long running concern amongst world leaders is that China’s President Xi Jinping will follow Vladimir Putin’s strategy of invading and forcefully annexing and aligning the island with Chinese leadership and policy. Pundits believe that Xi’s absence at the UN suggests a lack of urgency in the speech. Putin joined Xi in not attending the meeting.
