China is leaning on a half-century-old U.N. ruling to strengthen its sweeping claim over Taiwan, issuing a white paper this week that Taiwan denounced as an attempt to lay legal groundwork for an eventual invasion, Firstpost reported.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry released the position paper on Tuesday as the U.N. General Assembly concluded its annual session in New York.

The document asserted that Resolution 2758 of 1971 had "once and for all" settled Taiwan's fate, even though the resolution merely transferred China's U.N. seat from Taipei to Beijing and did not address sovereignty.

Washington pushed back sharply.

The American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. Embassy on the island, stated that Beijing was "deliberately distorting" postwar treaties to justify its coercion. The State Department later backed that assessment, stressing that "none of these documents determined Taiwan's final political status."

Beijing has long insisted that Taiwan is a province of China that must be "reunified," by force if necessary. The island, a former Japanese colony, became the refuge of Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists after Mao Zedong's communists took control of the mainland in 1949.

Taiwan counters that the U.N. resolution resolved only the issue of which government would represent "China" at the U.N.

"Our country and the People's Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and the People's Republic of China has no right to represent Taiwan in the international community," said Taiwan's foreign minister, Lin Chia-lung.

China's white paper accused "external forces" of twisting the U.N. framework and declared there was "no such thing as two Chinas or one China, one Taiwan."

It said any challenge to Resolution 2758 was a challenge to China's sovereignty and to the authority of the United Nations.

The United States does not recognize Taiwan as an independent state, but it is its primary security partner and arms supplier. Washington supports maintaining the "status quo," which keeps the island democratic and self-governed, while warning Beijing against attempts to alter it by force.

Taiwan's Foreign Ministry said Beijing's interpretation "aims to create a legal basis for altering the status quo across the Taiwan Strait and for future military assault against Taiwan."

U.S. intelligence has concluded that Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered the People's Liberation Army to be capable of moving on Taiwan by 2027.

While most nations formally recognize Beijing, major powers such as the United States, Britain, and India oppose any forced change to Taiwan's status. Analysts argue that the U.N. resolution was a political compromise on representation rather than a legal ruling on territorial sovereignty.

"The decision in 1971 was about representation, not about sovereignty," wrote Nathan Attrill of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "It certainly didn't endorse Beijing's claim that Taiwan is an inalienable part of its territory."

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