Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said on Saturday her mission in life was to ensure the island continued to belong to its people and that Taiwan’s existence was a provocation to no one, in a fiery pre-election rebuff to China.
Taiwan’s Nov. 26 local elections come a month after Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has ramped up military pressure on the democratically-governed island to accept Beijing’s sovereignty, secured a precedent-breaking third leadership term.
While the vote for mayors and councillors is nominally about domestic issues, Tsai told thousands of cheering supporters at a rally in central Taipei that much more was at stake, the first time she has so explicitly gone after China in this campaign.
Tsai said she had not “surrendered” to Xi’s “one country, two systems” proposal for autonomy under Chinese sovereignty and that under her leadership more and more countries regard Taiwan’s democracy and security as the key to the peace.
“I want to tell everyone that the existence of Taiwan and Taiwanese people’s insistence on freedom and democracy are not a provocation to anyone,” she said at the rally for her ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
“As president, my calling is to make every effort to let Taiwan still be the Taiwan of the Taiwanese people.”
China staged war games near Taiwan in August after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei, and has since continued military activities nearby including almost daily fighter jet crossings of the sensitive median line in the narrow Taiwan Strait.
U.S. President Joe Biden will meet Xi next week, with Taiwan on the agenda, according to the White House.