China: 'Ignorant' to Call Taiwan a Country

It is "arrogant and ignorant" to call Taiwan a country and its future can only be decided by China's 1.4 billion people, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Thursday in a rebuff to the democratically-governed island's foreign minister.

China views Taiwan as its own territory and says the island is one of its provinces with no right to be called a state. It has stepped up military and political pressure to assert those claims, including increasing the intensity of war games.

Taiwan's Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said on Wednesday that China had no authority to decide whether Taiwan was a country because the island chooses its own government. He added that he would be happy to shake the hand of his Chinese opposite number, Wang Yi, in friendship.

Speaking to reporters in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Taiwan had never been a country.

"The relevant remarks only reveal that certain somebody's arrogance and ignorance, and they are naked provocations for Taiwan independence," she said.

"The future of Taiwan can only be decided by the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people, including our Taiwan compatriots, and China will and must be reunified eventually, which is a historical trend that no force can stop."

Taiwan's formal name is the Republic of China, the name of the government which in 1949 fled to the island after losing a bloody civil war with Mao Zedong's communists, who established the People's Republic of China. Taipei says Beijing has no right to speak for the island nor claim it as its own.

In a video released on Thursday by his office, Taiwan President Lai Ching-te told military officers that "precious" freedom and democracy must be guarded by strength and constant vigilance.

"Freedom and democracy are not gifts that fall from the sky; they are the fruits of the perseverance and sacrifice of generations of courageous people," he said, in footage filmed on Friday when Lai was visiting the armed forces in southern Taiwan.

Lai, who China describes as a "separatist," is this week marking one year since he took office. China has rebuffed repeated offers from him for talks.