China’s Communist party toughens Taiwan rhetoric with call to ‘fight’ independence

China’s Communist party has sharpened its rhetoric towards Taiwan, raising the pressure on the country as its president-elect Lai Ching-te prepares to take office in May.

Wang Huning, China’s most senior official in charge of Taiwan policy after President Xi Jinping, said Beijing “must resolutely fight ‘Taiwan independence’ separatism”, according to an official account of the party’s annual Taiwan work conference, which ended in Beijing on Friday.

China must also “further grasp the strategic initiative to achieve the complete unification of the motherland”, the state news agency Xinhua quoted Wang as saying.

Political analysts said Wang’s language was markedly tougher than pronouncements from last year’s conference, and confirmed expectations that Beijing would step up efforts to push Taiwan into acquiescing to unification after Lai’s victory in the January 13 presidential election.

Lai’s win gives the ruling Democratic Progressive party, which insists Taiwan is an independent country, an unprecedented consecutive third term in office. Beijing claims the island as part of its territory and has threatened to take it by force if Taipei resists submitting to its control indefinitely.

“Previous statements only pledged to ‘resolutely oppose’ Taiwan independence, but now they are using ‘fight’,” said Chang Wu-yueh, an expert on cross-Strait relations at Tamkang University in Taipei.

“Last year’s language was limited to mentions of ‘peaceful development’, but now they have added mentions of pushing for unification,” Chang said.

The remarks by Wang, a member of the politburo standing committee, the Communist party’s most senior decision-making body, are the first top-level policy statement since Lai won the election.

Wang did not spell out any concrete policy details. In line with Communist party practice, he repeated some of the stock phrases with which the party describes its position, leaving observers to parse his choice of language for hints on policy direction.

“Statements which focused on ‘opposing Taiwan independence’ could be read as reflecting some more patience, but [the] inclusion of ‘pushing for progress in the unification of the motherland’ means the opposite,” said a Taiwanese politician familiar with cross-Strait policy.

China has denounced Lai as a dangerous separatist. Analysts and Taiwanese politicians have predicted that Beijing will respond to his victory by intensifying efforts to isolate Taiwan internationally, using economic coercion against it and intimidating it with military manoeuvres, while seeking dialogue with political and social groups outside the DPP.

Chang said Friday’s statement confirmed this and also reflected a harder stance that Xi signalled at his summit with US President Joe Biden late last year.

At the San Francisco meeting, Xi told Biden that if the US was committed to “one China”, it should support peaceful unification of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait — a demand that goes much further than Washington’s pledge not to support Taiwan independence.

“In the past, they would only talk about the ‘one-China principle’, but now they have rolled it all into one with the push for unification,” Chang said.