On Tuesday, China accused the US of “political manipulation” after the State Department changed the wording of a Taiwan fact sheet on its website.
The State Department removed a line that said the US “does not support Taiwan independence.” It also removed a line that said the US recognizes “the government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, acknowledging the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is a part of China.”
The changes were made on the website last week, but China didn’t notice until Tuesday. “This kind of political manipulation on the Taiwan question is an attempt to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, and will inevitably stir up a fire that only burn,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.
State Department spokesman Ned Price defended the edits to the fact sheet, insisting it did not mean a change in policy. He said while the wording is different, the US’s “underlying policy has not changed.”
“We regularly do updates on our fact sheets. Our fact sheets reflect, in the case of Taiwan, our rock-solid unofficial relationship with Taiwan, and we call upon the PRC to behave responsibly and to not manufacture pretenses to increase pressure on Taiwan,” Price added.
The changes come as the US has been increasing its informal ties with Taiwan as a way to counter China. Starting under the Trump administration, the US began sending more high-level officials to the island, drawing the ire of Beijing as the island is the most sensitive issue between the two powers.
Back in January, China’s ambassador to the US, Qin Gang, warned that Washington’s increasing support for Taipei could ultimately lead to war between the US and China. “If the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the United States, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in the military conflict,” Qin said.
China should respond in Kind:
“The China supports the Islands of Hawaii independence and not part of US”…!
Also: Puerto Rico and the U.S.
Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea, Guam and the Northern Mariana
Islands in the North Pacific Ocean, and American Samoa in the South
Pacific Ocean.
Good thing for Xi that he isn’t dying in cancer, he can properly prepare his invasion unlike Putin who really, really is in a rush…
China Views Russia’s War as ‘Bad for Business’
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Beijing views Moscow as an increasingly “inconvenient friend” as the war in Ukraine is further bogged down.
China appears to be increasingly embarrassed by Russia’s conduct of its war in Ukraine, Britain’s defense secretary told reporters on Tuesday, underlining a growing split in the
once-budding relationship between the two powers that has dissuaded Beijing from providing material support to Moscow over the course of the ongoing conflict.
In more than two months of war, while China has refused to condemn Russia’s full-scale invasion and has helped parrot Russian disinformation, it has also stopped short of
providing real support for the Kremlin’s war effort. There was speculation that China could supply rations for hard-pressed Russian troops or backfill Russian arms needs, but that hasn’t come to pass. China’s top drone-maker, DJI, suspended operations in Russia and Ukraine in late April, depriving ill-supplied Russian units of additional capability to send off-the-shelf intelligence into Ukraine’s skies. China has also balked at providing Russia with spare parts for its sanctioned civilian airliner fleet, underscoring Moscow’s isolation under an array of economic and financial sanctions. One Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence assessments, said that there was no indication that Beijing was supplying anything of scale.
Poor, poor Putin, at least he has his army of trolls on this page.
But he might soon grow tired of you guys as well, you don’t really seem to be able to shift the opinion. Maybe its because you only dare to ventilate your views here, hidden under a username 🙂
State Department spokesman Ned Price defended the edits to the fact sheet, insisting it did not mean a change in policy. He said while the wording is different, the US’s “underlying policy has not changed.”
“We regularly do updates on our fact sheets. Our fact sheets reflect, in the case of Taiwan, our rock-solid unofficial relationship with Taiwan, and we call upon the PRC to behave responsibly and to not manufacture pretenses to increase pressure on Taiwan,” Price added.
Wow. Another double-talking douchebag.