Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on June 22, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleTaiwan's President Lai Ching-te declares Taiwan a country, challenging China's claims. He emphasizes Taiwan's unique history and the right of its people to decide their future.
By Ben Blanchard
TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan is "of course" a country and China lacks both the historical evidence and legal proof to back up its sovereignty claims, President Lai Ching-te said on Sunday in a strong rebuke to Beijing and its stepped up political and military pressure.
China says democratically-governed Taiwan is "sacred" Chinese territory that has belonged to the country since ancient times, and that the island is one of its provinces with no right to be called a state.
Lai and his government strongly reject that view, and have offered talks with China multiple times but have been rejected. China calls Lai a "separatist".
Giving the first of 10 speeches in a series called "uniting the country", Lai drew on Taiwan's history, including the millennia-long connection of its indigenous people to other Austronesians, like native Hawaiians, to show what he said was Taiwan's separate and distinct development from China.
Taiwan's people have a record of opposing invasion, like uprisings against Japan's 1895-1945 colonial rule, and under the last imperial Chinese dynasty, the Qing, Taiwan was only considered a Chinese province for eight years, he added.
"Of course Taiwan is a country," he said at a speech to a Taiwan branch of Rotary International, pointing also to its presidential elections. "But China says no, that Taiwan is not a sovereign country."
China's Taiwan's Affairs Office did not respond to a request for comment outside of office hours. China says the 1971 United Nations resolution, which took away Taipei's seat in the body and gave it to Beijing, is one of the legal bases of its claims.
Lai, who in March called China a "hostile foreign force", said it was "totally wrong" for Beijing to say that U.N. resolution had anything to do with Taiwan's sovereignty as it was only about which government was represented at the body.
China's threat to Taiwan is real, added Lai, pointing to its daily military activities around the island.
"Taiwan's future can only be decided by its 23 million people - does everyone approve of this?" he said, to a round of applause.
The defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong's communists, and that remains the island's formal name.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Ryan Woo in Beijing; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
President Lai Ching-te stated that Taiwan is 'of course' a country and criticized China's sovereignty claims as lacking historical evidence and legal proof.
China considers Taiwan to be 'sacred' Chinese territory and asserts that it has belonged to China since ancient times, viewing the island as a province with no right to sovereignty.
Lai referenced Taiwan's history of resistance against invasion, including uprisings against Japanese colonial rule and the Qing dynasty's limited recognition of Taiwan as part of China.
Lai mentioned that his government has offered talks with China multiple times, but these offers have been rejected, and he labeled China as a 'hostile foreign force'.
Lai emphasized that Taiwan's future should be determined by its 23 million people, highlighting the importance of public approval in decisions regarding sovereignty.
Explore more articles in the Headlines category
