BEIJING (Dispatches) -- China would not fear confrontation with the United States but would welcome cooperation if it is mutually beneficial, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.
Problems in the U.S.-China relationship were down to “strategic misjudgments” by the American side, he said in a speech, posted on foreign ministry website.
“If there is confrontation, then (China) will not fear it, and will fight to the finish,” he said. Wang said “there is no harm” in competition but it should be “positive”.
Relations between the United States and China are at a low over a range of disagreements including the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, trade, human rights, and Taiwan.
Wang said Taiwan is a “wanderer” that will eventually come home and not a chess piece to be played with.
China claims Taiwan as its own territory and has in the past two years stepped up military and diplomatic pressure to assert its sovereignty claims.
Wang said the cause of current tensions was the Taiwan government’s attempts to “rely on the United States for independence” and the United States and other countries trying to “use Taiwan to control China”.
“It is these perverse actions that have changed the status quo and undermined the peace in the Taiwan Strait, violating the consensus of the international community and the basic norms of international relations,” said Wang, a former head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.
To respond to this, China had taken “forceful countermeasures” to “shock the arrogance” of those who seek Taiwan’s formal independence, he said.
“Taiwan is a wanderer who will eventually come home, not a chess piece to be used by others. China must and will be reunified.”
Taiwan’s China-policymaking Mainland Affairs Council claimed in response that the island had never been a part of the People’s Republic of China.
“It is neither a wanderer nor a chess piece,” it said in a statement sent to Reuters.
China has been particularly angered by support for Taiwan from the United States, the island’s most important backer and arms supplier despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties.
The defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with the Communists, who established the People’s Republic of China.