Beijing rejects Taiwan’s offer of talks, telling ruling party to stop using ‘cheap tricks’
- Island’s President Tsai Ing-wen says island is ready to for talks with Beijing as long as it is willing to put aside confrontation
- Mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office urges Taipei’s leaders to ‘stop it with these cheap tricks that dupe people’
Beijing has rebuffed the latest offer of talks from Taiwan, saying the government in Taipei was engaging in a “cheap trick” and provocation by seeking confrontation at every turn.
Beijing regards the democratic and self-governed island as part of its territory, and cut off a formal talks mechanism in 2016 after Tsai was first elected, viewing her as a separatist bent on a formal declaration of independence.
In a statement late on Friday, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said there was no way of changing the reality that the island was part of China, and the refusal of Taiwan’s government to accept that was the cause of present tensions.
Since 2016, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) “has continued to provoke by seeking independence, confronting the mainland at every turn, deliberately creating confrontation across the Taiwan Strait”, it said.