Taiwan’s president told military academy students that the main challenge they face is Beijing’s rise to power.
China sees the “annexation” and “elimination” of Taiwan as a national cause, Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te said, telling cadets at the country’s top military academy they must know the enemy and not succumb to defeatism.
Lai has come under personal attack from China, which considers Taiwan its territory. Since taking office last month, Beijing has denounced him as a “separatist” and, shortly after taking office, deployed aircraft into Taiwanese airspace and conducted large-scale military drills around the island.
In his speech on Sunday, Lai said only the Taiwanese people can decide Taiwan’s future, and he has made repeated offers for talks with Beijing that have been rejected.
Speaking at the 100th anniversary of the founding of Whampoa Military Academy in Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan, Lai said today’s cadets must be aware of the challenges of the “new era”.
“The biggest challenge is confronting the powerful rise of China. [which is] “We regard the destruction of the status quo across the Taiwan Strait, the annexation of Taiwan and the elimination of the Republic of China as the great rejuvenation project of the Taiwanese people,” he said, using Taiwan’s official name.
“Our greatest mission is to bravely assume the heavy responsibility and great task of defending Taiwan and safeguarding peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” he added.
The Taiwan Affairs Office of China’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to calls seeking comment on Lai’s remarks on Sunday.
“Defeatism is unacceptable”
“Unification is a historical necessity for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Wang Huning, the Communist Party’s fourth-ranking leader, said at a forum on ties with Taiwan in China on Saturday, vowing to “smash any separatist plots.”
Speaking at the event, which was also attended by senior military officials and Neil Gibson, the U.S. diplomat in Kaohsiung, Lai said the cadets must protect Taiwan from being annexed by China and that its future can only be decided by its people.
“We must be able to distinguish between our enemies and our country, and between our enemies and our friends. Defeatism that ‘the first battle is the last battle’ is absolutely unacceptable,” Lai said, referring to the theory that Taiwan could quickly collapse if China launches an attack.
The academy was founded in Guangzhou, China, then known as Canton in English, in 1924, more than a decade after the founding of the Republic of China, which overthrew the last emperor.
Founded with Soviet backing to create a professional military loyal to the new China, it relocated to Nanjing, Chengdu and finally Kaohsiung after the defeated republican government fled to the island in 1949 at the end of a civil war won by Mao Zedong and Communist forces.
China claims that any move by Taiwan to formally declare independence would give it grounds to attack the island.
The Taipei government maintains that Taiwan is already independent as the Republic of China and has no plans to change that.
