Beijing: The President of China Xi Jinping used his annual New Year’s Eve address to reaffirm Beijing’s determination to reunify Taiwan with the mainland.
Speaking in Beijing on Wednesday evening, Xi said reunification with Taiwan was inevitable and framed it as part of a broader historical and national mission. China claims Taiwan as its territory and has long said it would use force if necessary to bring the island under its control, a position rejected by the Taiwanese government and most of its population.
Xi’s remarks followed two days of intense military exercises by the People’s Liberation Army around Taiwan. On Monday and Tuesday, Chinese forces carried out live-fire drills that simulated a blockade of key ports and involved the navy, air force, rocket force and coastguard. The drills, named Justice Mission 2025, came closer to Taiwan than previous exercises and included at least 89 military aircraft, the highest number recorded in more than a year.
Military analysts said the exercises had been widely anticipated before the end of the year, but Chinese commentators also linked them to Washington’s recent approval of a record 11-billion-dollar arms package for Taiwan.
US intelligence agencies have increasingly warned about China’s growing military capability and its ability to launch a potential operation against Taiwan if Xi were to give the order.
In his speech, Xi also sought to project China as an active global player, pointing to several multilateral events hosted by Beijing during the year. He highlighted the Shanghai Cooperation Summit held in August, which brought leaders including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, India’s Narendra Modi and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Tianjin.
The state television broadcast of the address was intercut with images from China’s largest-ever military parade, held in September to mark 80 years since the end of the second world war. The event, widely seen as a show of military strength, featured Xi standing alongside Putin and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un.
Taiwan featured prominently throughout the speech. Xi referred to Taiwan Retrocession Day, a Memorial Day introduced this year to mark the end of Japanese rule over the island in 1945. Historical narratives linked to the second world war have played a growing role in political messaging on both sides of the Taiwan Strait in recent months.
Xi also highlighted China’s advances in high-technology, citing developments such as humanoid robots and the Tianwen-2 space mission, as well as the international success of Chinese cultural products including video games and animated films.
Earlier on Wednesday, Xi told senior Communist Party officials that China remained on track to meet its economic growth target of around five percent, closing the year with a message that blended confidence at home with a firm stance on sovereignty and security issues abroad.
