Taiwan: no surprises from Trump-Xi summit, China should end military pressure

TAIPEI, May 14 (Reuters) – So far, nothing surprising has come out of a summit between Chinese and U.S. leaders in Beijing, but Beijing should stop its military pressure on Taipei as that is the real threat to peace, a senior Taiwanese government spokesperson said on Thursday.

China’s Xi Jinping warned U.S. President Donald Trump earlier in the day that disagreement over Taiwan, which Beijing views as its own territory, could send relations down a dangerous path and even lead to conflict.

Speaking in Taipei, Mainland Affairs Council deputy head and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh said that at virtually every China-U.S. meeting, Taiwan is one of the most important topics on the agenda.

“So at this point, all we can say is that there has been no surprising information so far and we will continue to maintain close communication with the American side,” he said, adding that comments about conflict had been made before.

The real threat to peace which risks triggering a crisis is China’s ongoing military harassment, Liang said, not the desires of the Taiwanese people to maintain their way of life.

“If maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is truly the greatest common ground between China and the United States, then the Chinese Communist Party should restrain its own behaviour of military intimidation,” he added.

China has never renounced the use of force to bring democratically governed Taiwan under its control and its warplanes and warships operate around the island almost daily.

The U.S. is Taiwan’s most important international backer despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties and is its largest supplier of weapons.

Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only the island’s people can decide their future.

(Reporting by Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Thomas Derpinghaus)