Foreign Minister Jaushieh Joseph Wu vowed Taiwan will leave no stone unturned in preventing conflict with China, calling war neither imminent nor inevitable.
Wu made the remarks during a video interview with Florence de Changy for an article published Jan. 2 on French newspaper Le Monde both in print and online.
According to Wu, despite China’s unprecedented level of military coercion and increasingly sophisticated gray zone tactics, the government is devoted to preserving the status quo while reinforcing its self-defense capabilities to make it clear that an invasion would be a major undertaking.
The minister called out Beijing’s distortion of U.N. Resolution 2758 to spread the disinformation that Taiwan is part of China and that the Taiwan Strait is part of its territorial waters. The truth is that the Communist Party of China has never governed Taiwan and has no right to claim sovereignty or to decide the fate of the country, he said.
Fortunately, the international community regards the strait as international waters, with Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. continuing to exercise freedom of navigation in the waterway, Wu added.
The minister also expressed his appreciation for fellow democracies like France, which have repeatedly emphasized the importance of cross-strait peace and stability and opposed any unilateral change to the status quo.
Taiwan welcomes the inclusion of provisions on freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific in the 2024-2030 military programming bill signed into law Aug. 1 by French President Emmanuel Macron, Wu said.
The minister went on to add that Taiwan-U.S. relations remain firm and unwavering regardless of China’s attempts to cause the people of Taiwan to lose confidence in the U.S.
In the face of cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns and economic coercion by China, Taiwan’s citizens have remained calm and capable of rational decision-making in the lead-up to the presidential and legislative elections Jan. 13, Wu concluded, adding that the country has already experienced three peaceful transitions of governing party. (POC-E)
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