Taiwan was included among the more than one hundred countries invited by the United States for the virtual summit on democracy that its president Joe Biden will hold on December 9 and 10, something that provoked protests on the part of the Chinese authorities today.
Quoted by the local press, the spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council (the Chinese Executive), Zhu Fenglian, said that it is a “mistake” to include Taiwan as one of the countries invited to take part in the event. , since Beijing considers the island a rebel province that has to be “reunited” with the rest of the People’s Republic.
However, the island authorities had already revealed days ago that they had been negotiating the aforementioned invitation with Washington since August in order to “share their democratic experience.”
Taiwan has been governed autonomously since 1949, when the Communists defeated the Nationalists in the civil war and the latter retreated to the island, continuing with a dictatorial regime until the culmination of the transition to democracy in the 1990s.
Throughout this time, the island has maintained the name of the Republic of China and the symbolism under which the Chinese nationalists also governed the territory of the current People’s Republic before its defeat in the civil war, although with democracy voices arose that bet for breaking with that past and formally declaring independence under the name of Taiwan.
Zhu reiterated today that China, which has not been invited to the aforementioned summit, “strongly opposes” any official US dealings with “the Chinese region of Taiwan.”
In 1979, Washington broke its official diplomatic relations with Taipei in favor of Beijing, although it continued to maintain ties with Taiwan through its ‘de facto’ embassy on the island, called the American Institute in Taiwan.
In fact, that same year the United States approved the so-called Taiwan Relations Act, which establishes that Washington will help Taiwan in defense matters, although it neither guarantees nor rules out that the North American country will intervene militarily in the event that China attack the island, following the political line known as “strategic ambiguity.”
The December summit will be the first of two on democracy to be held by Biden and aims to achieve a “democratic renewal” through lines of action such as defense against authoritarianism, the fight against corruption, or respect for rights. humans.