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Taiwan said on Friday that relations between Russia and China posed a threat to global peace and that the international community must resist “authoritarian expansion.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday in their first face-to-face meeting since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, praising them for ignoring strategic ties with the West.
In the Uzbekistan city of Samarkand, Xi told Putin that he was “willing to work together with Russia to assume the role of a great power.”
Putin reiterated Russia’s support for China’s claim to autonomous Taiwan, which Beijing regards as its own, and vowed to one day occupy the island.
The relationship between the two autocratic leaders has rattled Taipei, who fears Xi may one day follow Russia’s lead and invade a neighbor it has long threatened to subdue.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said in a statement that it “strongly condemns Russia, following the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian expansionist government, for continuing to make false remarks that belittle our country’s sovereignty on international occasions.”
“(Russia’s) calling those who maintain the peace and the status quo provocative,” the statement added, “highly reflects the danger to international peace, stability, democracy and freedom of an alliance between Chinese and Russian authoritarian regimes.”
‘unlimited’
China and Russia, formerly Cold War allies, have strained relations that have in recent years drawn closer as part of what they call an “unrestricted” relationship aimed at counterbalancing U.S. global dominance.
For Putin, the SCO summit in Samarkand comes at a big time, as his forces face a major battlefield setback in Ukraine and as the West continues to push Russia into an international pariah.
For Xi, it’s an opportunity to cement his credentials as a global statesman ahead of a key congress of the ruling Communist Party in October, expected to break precedent for a third term.
Under Xi Jinping, China’s most confident leader of a generation, Beijing’s slamming of Taiwan has intensified.
Tensions in the Taiwan Strait surged to the highest level in decades after China made an unprecedented show of force over U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei last month.
In the week following her visit, China sent warships, missiles and fighter jets to the waters and skies around Taiwan, which Taiwan denounced as exercises and missile tests in preparation for an invasion.
Xi Jinping has linked Taiwan’s “unification” to his signature “great rejuvenation” China policy.
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