Dong Jun rails at length about democratic island’s ‘separatists’ during Shangri-la Dialogue defence conference in Singapore
Peaceful “reunification” with Taiwan remains China’s goal but the prospect is being eroded by Taiwanese “separatists” and external forces, the Chinese defence minister, Dong Jun, has said.
Taiwan – which is democratically governed, and has never been ruled from the Communist-run People’s Republic of China – on 20 May inaugurated its newly elected president, Lai Ching-te. The routine democratic transition was greeted with fury by the Chinese Communist party, which staged war games around the island as a “punishment”.
Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue conference in Singapore, Dong said Taiwan was the “core of core issues” for China. He accused Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive party of incrementally pursuing separatism and working to erase Chinese identity.
Dong accused Taiwan’s leaders of “fanatical statements”, while employing fevered language of his own in his address to defence officials and politicians from around the world.
“They [‘separatists’] will be nailed to the pillar of shame in history,” he said. “The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has always been an indestructible and powerful force in defence of the unification of the motherland, and it will act resolutely and forcefully at all times to curb the independence of Taiwan and to ensure that it never succeeds in its attempts.
