Taiwan’s new president said Sunday he was still ready to work with China, despite this week’s military drills around the self-ruled island.

Three days after Lai Ching-te was sworn in, Chinese warships and fighter jets encircled Taiwan in drills that China said were a test of its ability to seize the island.

During the two-day drills, China vowed that “independence forces” would be left “with their heads broken and blood flowing”.

Lai told reporters on Sunday that he wanted Taiwan and China to “jointly shoulder the important responsibility of regional stability”.

“I also look forward to enhancing mutual understanding and reconciliation through exchanges and cooperation with China… and moving towards a position of peace and common prosperity,” he said at an event in Taipei.

Communications between China and Taiwan were severed in 2016 after former president Tsai Ing-wen took office, pledging to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty.

Lai, who comes from the same Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as Tsai, has vowed to maintain her policies of building up Taiwan’s defence capabilities, while remaining open to dialogue with China and strengthening relations with the island’s partners — particularly the United States.

But China said Lai’s inaugural speech on Monday amounted to calls for independence, “pushing our compatriots in Taiwan into a perilous situation of war and danger”.

“Every time ‘Taiwan independence’ provokes us, we will push our countermeasures one step further, until the complete reunification of the motherland is achieved,” defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian said on Friday.

Wen-Ti Sung, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, told AFP that Lai would “hold firm to project resolve” after this first interaction between his administration and Beijing.

“However, he will no doubt be looking to leverage other international partners and friends to help facilitate more back-channel communications with Beijing,” Sung said.

On Sunday night, the United States’ de facto embassy announced that Republican Congressman Michael McCaul will lead a delegation to visit Taiwan from Sunday to Thursday “to discuss US-Taiwan relations, regional security, trade and investment”.

Taiwan’s presidential spokesperson Wen Lii said the delegation will be meeting with Lai on Monday.

The visit “conveys an expression of support for the new administration and the people of Taiwan through concrete actions,” he said.

Intimidation tactics

Since 2016, China has upped military and political pressures on Taiwan, and its naval vessels, drones and warplanes maintain a near-daily presence around the island.

The dispute has long made the Taiwan Strait one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints.

During this week’s drills, fighter jets loaded with live ammunition scrambled towards targets and bombers formed formations to combine with warships to simulate “strikes against important targets”, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said.

Tong Zhen, from China’s Academy of Military Sciences, told state news agency Xinhua that the drills “mainly targeted the ringleaders and political centre of ‘Taiwan independence’, and involved simulated precision strikes on key political and military targets”.

Meng Xiangqing, a professor from Beijing-based National Defense University, told Xinhua that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) vessels “were getting closer to the island than ever before”.

“The drills have shown that we can control that eastern area,” Meng said, referring to the direction considered by the PLA the most likely from which external intervention could come.

The United States, which does not diplomatically recognise Taiwan but is its biggest ally and arms supplier, on Saturday urged China to “act with restraint”.

Experts say Beijing is seeking to intimidate and exhaust Taiwan’s military.

On Sunday, two days after the drills ended, Taiwan’s defence ministry reported that seven Chinese aircraft, 14 naval vessels and four coast guard ships were “operating around” the island in a 24-hour period ending at 06:00 am (2200 GMT Saturday).

The ministry also said in a separate statement that it had found a cardboard box containing political slogans that it said was left by Beijing on a dock in Erdan, an islet part of Taiwan-controlled Kinmen next to China’s Xiamen.

The defence ministry shrugged off the incident, saying it suspected it was intended to create online chatter.

‘Major test’

Lai’s first week in office also saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets of Taipei to protest bills proposed by the opposition Kuomintang — regarded as pro-Beijing — and the Taiwan People’s Party.

DPP lawmakers have been accusing the opposition of fast-tracking the bills — which expand parliament’s powers — without proper consultation.

With Lai’s DPP no longer holding the majority in parliament, his party will likely face challenges in passing his administration’s policies, such as bolstering the defence budget.

“The pressures are coming fast and early for the Lai administration,” Amanda Hsiao of the International Crisis Group told AFP.

“This is going to be a major test of their ability to manage multiple challenges, domestic and external, at the same time.”

Taipei:

Taiwan on Thursday condemned China as “shameless” after Beijing’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations thanked the world for its concern about a strong earthquake on the island.

China claims democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and also claims the right to speak for it on the international stage, to the fury of Taipei given Beijing’s communist government has never ruled the island and has no say in how it chooses its leaders.

On Wednesday, after the 7.2 earthquake hit eastern Taiwan, killing 10 people, China’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the U.N., Geng Shuang, mentioned at a meeting about children’s rights that another speaker had brought up the quake in “China’s Taiwan”.

China is concerned about the damage and has expressed condolences to Taiwan and offered aid, he said, according to a transcript of his remarks carried on the Chinese mission to the U.N.’s website.

“We thank the international community for its expressions of sympathy and concern,” he added.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry expressed anger at the remarks.

The ministry “solemnly condemns China’s shameless use of the Taiwan earthquake to conduct cognitive operations internationally”, it said, using Taiwan’s normal term for what it views as Chinese psychological warfare.

This shows China has no goodwill towards Taiwan, the ministry added.

Taiwan’s government has already thanked governments and leaders around the world for their messages of concern and offers of support, including from the United States, the island’s most important international supporter despite the lack of diplomatic ties.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

As People’s Liberation Army fighter jets from China sped toward Taiwan on Friday, life on the self-governing island carried on as normal.

Andy Huang, a restaurateur in Taipei, said he has become desensitized to military threats from the mainland.

“I’ve been hearing about China invading for 30 years,” he said.

Taiwan’s government is racing to counter China, buying nearly $19 billion in military equipment from the United States, and extending military conscription for men to a year starting in 2024. But many on the island say they don’t feel the threat.

That may be partly due to the nuanced views many Taiwanese hold of China. While polls indicate most people on the island reject reunification, many say they are attracted to their much larger neighbour’s dynamic economy, and its shared language and culture. Others are simply numb to hearing about the threat in their backyard.

Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory, and its actions in recent years have led some to fear it is preparing to use force to try to take control of the island. Taiwan has been compared to Ukraine by American lawmakers and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.

The island’s politicians have not been shy about sounding the alarm. “In order to keep the peace, we need to strengthen ourselves,” Ms. Tsai said last month at a war memorial commemorating the last time Taiwan and China battled.

Members of the public don’t feel that urgency.

Coco Wang is one of the many people who feel a connection to China without considering themselves Chinese. Her grandparents came to Taiwan among people fleeing the 1949 Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, which left rival governments ruling the mainland and Taiwan. Her grandparents kept in touch with relatives in China, and she remembers summers traveling through the country’s rural areas with her parents.

She considers herself Taiwanese, but worked in Shanghai for a year before the pandemic and is thinking of going back.

The opportunities in China are so much bigger, she said. “There’s this feeling that if you just go in and you really work at it, then you can really achieve something,” she said.

China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner, receiving 39% of the island’s exports in 2022 despite new trade barriers imposed amid rising tensions.

While Ms. Wang feels drawn to China, she acknowledged that it is not entirely possible to leave politics at the door when working there. Colleagues in Shanghai occasionally called her a “Taiwanese separatist.”

She knew they meant it as a joke, but it made her uncomfortable. To herself, she thought: “We are already independent. Taiwan is just Taiwan.”

Her viewpoint is widely shared.

Since polling began in the 1990s, majorities on Taiwan have said they favor the status quo, rejecting both proposals for unification with the mainland and a formal declaration of independence that could mean war.

But a closely watched poll question that asks people whether they consider themselves Chinese has shown the island’s population growing further from the mainland, said Ching-hsin Yu, the head of National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center. When polling began in 1992, over two-thirds of respondents said they were both Chinese and Taiwanese, or just Chinese. Today, close to two-thirds say they are just Taiwanese, while around 30% identify as both.

Those attitudes don’t translate directly into views on relations with the mainland, Mr. Yu said, but among the majority who identify as Taiwanese there has been a subtle shift toward favouring the status quo for now, but with “eventual independence.”

Mr. Huang, the restaurant owner, said he was taught in school that he was Chinese, but as an adult came to consider himself just Taiwanese.

His restaurant in Taipei, which specializes in Taiwanese cuisine, has a “Lennon Wall” dedicated to the now-banned Hong Kong democracy movement, decorated with hundreds of Post-It notes with messages from patrons.

Mr. Huang shut down in solidarity with protesters during Taiwan’s Sunflower movement in 2014, when tens of thousands demonstrated against a trade deal with China. He says the Chinese population is “brainwashed.”

Personally, he wants independence now, but he also said he can wait until more of Taiwan’s public is convinced.

Nor does he think much about war, he said. “Whether they attack or not, that’s for China’s leaders to decide; it’s pointless for us to worry,” said Mr. Huang.

For others, like Chen Shih-wei, cultural and emotional ties to China are very strong. Mr. Chen’s family immigrated to Taiwan during the Ming dynasty, which ended in 1644, and he considers himself both Chinese and Taiwanese.

“I’m Chinese and I’m Taiwanese. This can’t be separated,” he said. “We’ve read the history, including the clan records, and we are clear that we came from the mainland, and came from people who had landed in Taiwan, and grew up here.”

Mr. Chen, who is from Taichung in central Taiwan, travelled to China many times as a young athlete, starting in 1990. On the mainland, he said, he encountered more similarities than differences. Mr. Chen is pro-reunification, but doesn’t believe it will happen in his lifetime.

Mr. Chen now lives in Matsu, a group of Taiwanese-held islands that are closer to China than the island of Taiwan. He said he is somewhat worried about the prospect of conflict. “This is not what the public on both sides want to see,” he said.

No one sees an easy way out of the accumulated antagonism of the past several years, whether military, diplomatic or economic.

But Ms. Wang said the tensions are between the two governments, not between people.

“Taiwanese and mainlanders are largely friendly to each other. Why is it like this?” she said.