Joe Biden invites Taiwan to his signature democracy summit
A spokeswoman for the Xi Jinping administration said the invitation of Taiwan was ‘a mistake’.
President Joe Biden has invited Taiwan to his signature democracy summit, a demonstration of solidarity that was followed by near immediate outrage in Beijing.
December’s virtual summit will discuss the challenges posed by authoritarian states, including China. Taiwan’s inclusion was welcomed in Taipei on Wednesday and is the latest in a string of actions taken by the Biden administration to increase its space in the international system
“The invitation to participate in the Democracy Summit is an affirmation of Taiwan’s efforts to promote the value of democracy and human rights over the years,” said a spokeswoman at Taiwan’s foreign ministry.
A spokeswoman for the Xi administration said the invitation of Taiwan was “a mistake”. “We firmly oppose any form of official interaction between the US and the island,” she said.
A researcher at a government-sanctioned think tank told Chinese state media that Taiwan’s inclusion was a “crafty tactic”.
The invitation comes after the US and Taiwan this week held economic talks between officials and the US navy sailed through the Taiwan Strait for the 10th time since Mr Biden took office.
It was announced as Beijing continues to threaten Lithuania – a country with a population of less than 3 million – over its relations with Taiwan.
This week, Beijing also said it would penalise Taiwanese companies that it believed were supporting Taiwanese independence.
And on Wednesday, a Xi administration official said Beijing was preparing to sanction further Taiwanese who supported formal independence for the self-governed island.
“We will punish them in accordance with the law,” said Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman at Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office.
President Xi Jinping has become increasingly frustrated by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s success in internationalising the future of Taiwan, which Beijing maintains is an “internal issue”. Beijing denies all agency to the more than 23 million people who live in Taiwan, which has become a leading democracy in Asia.
Mr Xi’s communist party speaks of Taiwan dogmatically, as unfinished business from a more than 70-year-old civil war.
“Achieving China’s complete reunification is an aspiration shared by all sons and daughters of the Chinese nation,” he told Mr Biden in their three- hour meeting last week.
Opinion polls show Taiwanese are overwhelmingly opposed to being governed by Beijing. That has only increased following Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong.
Mr Xi erupted over Taiwan during the meeting with Mr Biden, warning “whoever plays with fire will get burnt”. Beijing’s propaganda machine routinely threatens military action against Taiwan, but such a blunt threat at leader level was unusual.
Ryan Hass, formerly a director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia on the Obama administration’s National Security Council, said Mr Xi’s “provocative language” revealed his frustration.
“The United States continues to demonstrate visibly its support for Taiwan … and gives confidence to the people of Taiwan in their own future and challenges (Beijing’s) efforts to isolate and intimidate Taiwan,” Mr Hass told a panel at the Brookings Institution, where he is now a senior fellow.
“They’re frustrated by the administration’s progress in internationalising the Taiwan issue.”
As well as defending democracies from authoritarianism, the summit will discuss how to reduce corruption and promote respect for human rights.
Taiwan will be represented at the summit by Audrey Tang, a transgender minister in the Tsai government, and Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan’s most senior representative in Washington.
“The invitation is a testament to Taipei’s diplomacy in Washington over many years now and a substantive recognition by the US and the international community of the strength of Taiwan’s democracy in an era of a growing democratic deficit,” said Mark Harrison, an expert on Taiwan at the University of Tasmania.
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