By Brenda Goh
SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China’s fourth-highest-ranked leader said on Saturday that China and Taiwan should work to achieve “peaceful reunification”, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported
Wang Huning, a Communist Party Politburo standing committee member in charge of dealing with Taiwan, said at an event in Beijing to mark the 80th anniversary of the island’s “restoration” to Chinese rule that China however would not tolerate any activities promoting Taiwanese independence.
At the event at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Wang also said China will take the lead in sharing the fruits of its development and progress with Taiwan’s people, Taiwan’s official Central News Agency said in a separate report datelined Beijing.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said China was repeating the “same old message” and that China’s real aim was to “annex” Taiwan.
“The experience of Hong Kong has also demonstrated that ‘one country, two systems’ ultimately amounts to authoritarian rule by the Chinese Communist Party,” the council said.
The so-called development prospects under “unification” hold no appeal whatsoever for the people of Taiwan, it added.
Taiwan’s government is not formally marking the event, instead celebrating the anniversary of the 1949 Battle of Guningtou, when communist forces tried and failed to invade Kinmen island, held to this day by Taipei.
“We hope to further become a trusted security partner to our allies, and together build a strong line of defence to safeguard the values of freedom and democracy,” President Lai Ching-te wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday about that anniversary.
China and democratically-governed Taiwan, which Beijing views as its own territory, have repeatedly clashed this year over their differing interpretations of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two.
Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1895 until 1945, when it was handed over to the Republic of China government, which in 1949 fled to the island after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists. That remains Taiwan’s formal name.
Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s territorial claims, saying only the island’s people can decide their future.
(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Writing and additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
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