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BEIJING / TAIPEI (Reuters) – China will fight back any move that undermines its fundamental interests, its foreign ministry said on Friday, after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Taiwan “has not been part of China. “.
China calls Taiwan the most sensitive and important issue in its relations with the United States, and has been angered by the Trump administration’s increased support for the China-claimed but democratically governed island, such as arms sales.
In an American radio interview on Thursday, Pompeo said: “Taiwan has not been part of China.”
“That was recognized by the work the Reagan administration did to design the policies that the United States has now adhered to for three and a half decades,” he said.
The United States is required by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, and officially only recognizes the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of it, rather than explicitly acknowledging China’s claims.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that Taiwan was an inalienable part of China and that Pompeo was further damaging Sino-US ties.
“We solemnly tell Pompeo and his ilk that any behavior that undermines China’s fundamental interests and interferes with China’s internal affairs will be met with a determined counterattack by China,” he said, without elaborating.
China has imposed sanctions on US companies that sell weapons to Taiwan and flew fighter jets near the island when top US officials visited Taipei this year.
The defeated government of the ROC fled to Taiwan in 1949 after unleashing a civil war against the Communists, who founded the People’s Republic of China.
Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou thanked Pompeo for her support.
“The ROC on Taiwan is a sovereign and independent country, and not part of the People’s Republic of China. This is a fact and the current situation,” he said.
Taiwanese officials will travel to Washington next week for the economic talks, which have also upset Beijing.
(Reporting by Yew Lun Tian and Ben Blanchard; Edited by Robert Birsel)
