TAIPEI – Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te urged democracies across the Indo-Pacific to work together to preserve peace and stability, speaking Saturday during Taiwan’s National Day celebrations as the island remains at the center of tensions between China and the United States.
Lai said Taiwan supports dialogue between Beijing and Washington as they manage their rivalry and seek to lower the danger of confrontation. But he emphasized that lasting peace also depends on an accurate understanding of history.
“There must be respect for the right of the people of Taiwan to exist,” he said. “Democracies in the Indo-Pacific must join forces to ensure the status quo of peace and stability in the region is not changed.”
Taiwan has come under intensifying military and political pressure from China, which claims the self-governing island as its territory and has not ruled out using force to take control of it. During a September meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, Chinese President Xi Jinping said he hoped the United States would maintain “the correct position of opposing ‘Taiwan independence.’”
Lai said Beijing’s pressure campaign is intended to alter the existing balance across the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan’s determination, he argued, is about more than defending itself against “authoritarian expansion”; it also reflects a broader question of whether the world still believes that military force must not supersede international rules.
Beijing and Taipei have been separately governed since 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party took power on the mainland after a civil war and defeated Nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan. The island has maintained its own government ever since.
China has repeatedly urged Washington to stop selling weapons to Taiwan, including at a May summit in Beijing between Trump and Xi. Following that meeting, a record $14 billion U.S. arms package for Taiwan was delayed.
Lai said Taiwan’s expanded defense spending is intended to prevent conflict and strengthen deterrence, not provoke Beijing.
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“We are strengthening our self-defense not to abandon dialogue, but to ensure that dialogue can take place on the basis of parity and dignity,” he said.
The president added that Taiwan values peace but will not surrender its freedom.
Taiwan’s National Day events drew foreign dignitaries, including Eswatini King Mswati III and Micah Beckwith, Indiana’s lieutenant governor, according to Lai’s office. Eswatini remains Taiwan’s only diplomatic ally in Africa. A delegation of Japanese lawmakers also traveled to the island and took part in the celebrations.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi angered Beijing last November when she said a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Japanese forces to become involved.
The holiday commemorates the founding of the Republic of China, which overthrew the Qing Dynasty in 1911. The government later moved to Taiwan in 1949 as Mao Zedong’s Communist forces took control of mainland China at the end of the civil war.
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Leung reported from Hong Kong.
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