'China will surely be reunified with Taiwan': Xi Jinping's message to Taipei ahead of its polls

China will “surely be unified” with Taiwan, said Xi Jinping in his New Year’s address on Monday. The statement of the Chinese president comes less than a fortnight before the crucial election in Taipei City on 13 January. Also, the remarks were made by Xi amid renewing Beijing’s threats to take over the self-ruled island, which it considers its own. “China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose,” Xi said, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Taiwan election 2024 China has described the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in Taiwan as a choice between war and peace. Also, Beijing considers Taiwan’s presidential front-runner, William Lai, who currently serves as vice president from the ruling Democratic People’s Party, a “separatist” and has accused him and incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen of trying to provoke a Chinese attack on the island. Taiwan split from China amid civil war in 1949, but Beijing continues to regard the island of 23 million with its high-tech economy as Chinese territory and has been ramping up its threat to achieve that by military force if necessary. On Saturday, spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, Chen Binhua, called Lai a “destroyer of peace” following a televised debate earlier that day in which Lai defended Taiwan’s right to rule itself as a democracy. Chen said Lai’s discourse at the debate was “full of confrontational thinking,” adding that the vice president is “the instigator of a potential dangerous war in the Taiwan Strait.” During the debate, Lai had said Taiwan is not subordinate to China and he was open to communications with Beijing “as long as there is equality and dignity on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.” While Lai doesn’t describe himself as seeking independence from Beijing, he generally maintains Taiwan is already an independent country. Lai’s election rivals include Hou Yu-ih from the more China-friendly Kuomintang party, and Ko Wen-je from the Taiwan People’s Party. With inputs from AP