BEIJING: Taiwan President Lai Ching-te is “prostituting” himself to foreigners to try and win their favour but his schemes are doomed to fail, China’s government said on Wednesday (Oct 8) after he gave an interview lauding US President Donald Trump.
China, which views Taiwan as its own territory, has a special dislike of Lai, saying he is a “separatist” and rebuffing his repeated offers of talks. Lai says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.
In an interview released this week with a conservative US radio show and podcast, Lai said Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize if he could convince Chinese President Xi Jinping to abandon use of force against Taiwan. Trump and Xi are expected to meet this month at a regional summit in South Korea.
Responding to the interview, in which Lai also talked about China’s military threats and increased defence spending, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said Lai was “spouting nonsense”, showing his true nature as a manufacturer of crises and destroyer of peace.
Since taking office last year, Lai has been “rampantly propagating separatist fallacies”, it said.
Using unusually strong wording, the statement added: “He has engaged in unprincipled foreign pandering and bottomless selling out of Taiwan, squandering the flesh and blood of the people, prostituting himself and throwing in his lot with foreign forces”.
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