Taiwan urges China to avoid ‘military adventurism’

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has said that military conflict is not the answer as the Chinese President Xi Jinping talked about the complete unification of “the motherland” – an aspiration that Taiwan rejects.

Taiwan has urged China to curb its “military adventurism”, with tensions between the two sides at their highest level in years.

“We must remind the Beijing authorities to not misjudge the situation and to prevent the internal expansion of ‘military adventurism’,” President Tsai Ing-wen said on Saturday in her New Year’s speech broadcast live on Facebook.

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has increased military and diplomatic pressure in the past two years to assert its sovereignty claims.