Beijing accuses Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen of demanding equal ‘state-to-state’ treatment
- Beijing says her comments that Taiwan should not be ‘subordinate’ to the mainland had revived the doctrine first adopted by Taipei in 1999
- Tsai is reported to have played a prominent role in formulating the theory, which Beijing says cannot exist alongside the one-China principle
“Let us here renew with one another our enduring commitment to a free and democratic constitutional system, our commitment that the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China should not be subordinate to each other,” she said.
On Wednesday, Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesman for the mainland Taiwan Affairs Office said when asked about Tsai’s comments: “Both sides across the Taiwan Strait belong to one China and their relations are by no means ‘state-to-state’. The so-called ‘not subordinate to each other’ is the explicit rhetoric of the ‘two-state theory’.”
Taiwanese media reports have described Tsai as playing a leading role in formulating the theory, which was adopted by then-president Lee Teng-hui in 1999.
Beijing sees Taiwan as a breakaway province and has never renounced the use of force to reunite it with the mainland.
