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Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen said Saturday that her mission in life is to ensure that the island continues to belong to the Taiwanese people and that Taiwan’s presence will not provoke anyone, in a vehement rejection of China ahead of the election.
Taiwan’s Nov. 26 local elections come a month after Chinese President Xi Jinping has stepped up military pressure on the democratically-run island to accept Beijing’s sovereignty for a third leadership term.
While the mayor’s and councillors’ vote was nominally about domestic issues, Tsai Ing-wen told thousands of cheering supporters at a rally in downtown Taipei that more things were at stake, which is what she’s doing in this campaign For the first time, China has been so explicitly targeted.
read more: Joe Biden, Xi Jinping will meet: high stakes, but low expectations
Tsai Ing-wen said she did not “give in” to Xi Jinping’s “one country, two systems” claim for Chinese sovereignty and autonomy, and under her leadership, more and more countries saw Taiwan’s democracy and security as the key to peace.
“I want to tell everyone that Taiwan’s existence and the Taiwanese people’s insistence on freedom and democracy are not a provocation to anyone,” she said at a rally for her ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
“My mission as president is to do everything in my power to make Taiwan still the Taiwan of the Taiwanese people.”
China held military exercises near Taiwan in August following a visit to Taipei by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and has since continued military activities nearby, including nearly daily fighter jets crossing the sensitive centerline of the narrow Taiwan Strait.
U.S. President Joe Biden will meet Xi Jinping next week and the Taiwan issue will be on the agenda, according to the White House.
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