China said it will not give in on the Taiwan issue during its first military talks with the US since 2021.
It asked the US to “stop giving weapons to Taiwan” and to listen to its worries.
This happens shortly before important elections in Taiwan. The elections could either bring Taiwan closer to or farther from Beijing.
China says that Taiwan belongs to them, but Taiwan thinks of itself as separate from China.
The Chinese defense ministry said that China wants to have a good and steady relationship with the US military, based on fairness and respect.
The message said that the US should pay attention to China’s worries. China will not change its stance on Taiwan and wants the US to follow the one-China principle, promises, and stop supporting Taiwan’s independence.
Taiwan is an important and tense issue between China and the US as they compete for power in Asia. In 2022, China said no to talking because they were mad that US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022.
They started again earlier this week after China’s president Xi Jinping and US president Joe Biden made a deal in November. The meetings in Washington ended on Tuesday after two days of talking.
Taiwan said that it doesn’t see the Chinese satellite launch over the island as election interference.
A satellite was sent into space on Tuesday afternoon, which caused an alert for an air raid across the whole island. People on the island got a message on their phones telling them to be careful and stay safe.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said sorry for giving the wrong information about a missile in a message sent to people’s phones.
“Lin Yu-chan, a spokesman for Taiwan’s president, said that after the national security team looked at all the information and listened to other countries’ advice, they don’t think any political attempts will work. ”
The Chinese government’s news sources said that the Einstein Probe satellite is used to watch strange and short-lived events in space.
The KMT, the main opposition party on the island, criticized the use of a warning for the whole island as fear-mongering.