Taipei [Taiwan], September 2 : China's aim of annexing Taiwan is not driven by concerns for "territorial integrity" but as part of its goal to "transform the rules-based global order" and "achieve hegemony in the western Pacific region and internationally," Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te said in an interview with Taiwanese local media.
According to a report in Focus Taiwan, Lai, who was speaking in an interview on cable TV network ERATV broadcast on Sunday evening, said if China's claims on Taiwan were really about territorial integrity, why "don't they take back the land that was signed away and occupied by Russia in the Treaty of Aigun?"
The Taiwanese president was referring to the 1858 treaty signed by the Qing dynasty that ceded around 600,000 square kilometres of land in Manchuria to the Russian Empire.
China has laid claim to Taiwan, which it views as its own territory while the government of the self-governed island has rejected the claims.
The interview, according to Focus Taiwan, dwelled mostly on issues related to Taiwan's sovereignty and Taiwan's position vis-a-vis growing Chinese assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region.
Lai was cited by the publication as reiterating his government's opposition to the so-called "1992 consensus," which the opposition Kuomintang in power at the time, has described as a tacit agreement with the Chinese Communist Party that there is only one China, with each side free to interpret what that means.
The consensus was used as a formula to facilitate talks and closer ties between Taiwan and China when the KMT was in power from 2008 to 2016, but Lai's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has never accepted it.
Lai stated in the interview that Taiwan "absolutely cannot accept the 'One China' principle of the '1992 consensus'" because that would "be equivalent to transferring Taiwan's sovereignty" to China.
Lai also noted Taiwan's cooperation with various "democratic camp" alliances, such as the Quadrilateral Security Alliance (QUAD), AUKUS, and the Five Eyes Alliance that he said are "increasingly standing together."
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