China’s fourth-highest leader said on Saturday that China and Taiwan should work to achieve “peaceful reunification”, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
Wang Huning, a member of the Communist Party Politburo standing committee in charge of dealing with Taiwan, said at an event in Beijing to mark the 80th anniversary of the island’s “restoration” to Chinese rule that China, however, will not tolerate any activities that promote Taiwan’s independence.
At the event in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Wang also said that China will take the lead in sharing the fruits of its development and progress with the people of Taiwan, the Central News Agency, Taiwan’s official news agency, said in a separate report dated Beijing.
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Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said China was repeating the “same old message” and that China’s true goal was to “annex” Taiwan.
“Hong Kong’s experience has also demonstrated that ‘one country, two systems’ ultimately amounts to authoritarian rule by the Chinese Communist Party,” the council said.
The supposed development prospects under “unification” have no appeal to the people of Taiwan, he added.
The Taiwanese government is not formally marking the event, but rather commemorating the anniversary of the 1949 Battle of Guningtou, when communist forces tried and failed to invade the island of Kinmen, still held by Taipei.
“We hope to further become a reliable security partner for our allies and together build a strong line of defense to safeguard the values of freedom and democracy,” Taiwan President Lai Ching-te wrote on his Facebook page this Saturday regarding this anniversary.
China and democratically-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing views as its own territory, have had several frictions this year over their different interpretations of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two.
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Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945, when it was handed over to the government of the Republic of China, which in 1949 fled to the island after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists. Republic of China remains the formal name of Taiwan.
Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s territorial claims, saying only the island’s people can decide its future.
