Tsai Ing-wen, after being inaugurated to her second term as Taiwan’s president, said that Beijing must find a way to live peacefully alongside a democratic Taiwan that will never accept Chinese rule.
In the election that took place in January, voters elected Tsai to a second term with an overwhelming majority. A vocal rebuke is going on in the island nation against China.
The nation also celebrated its victory over the coronavirus. Taiwan has so far reported only 440 confirmed cases and 22 deaths. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised the nation of its handling the virus outbreak.
"The recent COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for the international community to see why Taiwan’s pandemic-response model is worthy of emulation," Pompeo was quoted as saying in a Reuters report.
The virus broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December. Taiwan adopted border restrictions and mask-wearing as early as January. Among other actions taken were a ban on travel from China, stopping cruise ships docking at the island's ports, and strict punishments for anyone who breached home quarantine orders.
Tsai is loathed by Beijing because she views Taiwan as a de facto sovereign state and not part of a “one China”. Tsai has vocally rebuffed attempts by China to annex Taiwan to its fold via talks and ramping up economic, military and diplomatic pressure on the island.
“We will not accept the Beijing authorities' use of 'one country, two systems' to downgrade Taiwan and undermine the cross-strait status quo,” she said. “We stand fast by this principle,” she maintained.
Tsai said that both nations needed to find a way to coexist in the long term and had offered to renew talks with Beijing to lower tensions.
Taiwan—officially the Republic of China—has been ruled separately from the mainland since 1949 after the Nationalists lost a civil war to the Communists and fled to the island to set up a rival government.
Beijing fears that any formal declaration of independence by Taiwan would cross a red line.
“She is telling China that her position has remained the same, she will not provoke but she rejects any policy that downgrades Taiwan and 'you can talk to me if you are willing',” Fan Shih-ping, a political scientist at National Taiwan Normal University, told AFP.
According to J. Michael Cole, a Taipei-based fellow with University of Nottingham's Taiwan Studies Programme, said Tsai's renewed offer of talks with Beijing would likely be spurned again.
All major Taiwanese parties have rejected the ‘one country, two systems policy’ China offered—the framework, which is supposed to guarantee a high degree of autonomy, same as the former British colony of Hong Kong, when it was handed back to Chinese rule in 1997.
