In response to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech earlier on Wednesday, in which he reiterated that China would “make no promise to renounce the use of force” in eventually unifying both sides of the Taiwan Strait, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen has herself dug in, saying Taiwan “will never accept the concept of ‘one country, two systems.’”
Tsai spoke at Taiwan’s Presidential Office in Taipei Wednesday, after Xi spoke in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to commemorate the 40th anniversary of “Message to Compatriots in Taiwan,” a policy document issued on the day the US and China established formal diplomatic relations that proposed dialogue and exchanges between the two countries, not military confrontation. Washington and Beijing established ties only after the US broke its formal ties to Taiwan. To this day, the US has no official embassy in Taipei, and the unofficial American Institute in Taiwan performs consular services.