Bloomberg News
Date: October 11, 2020
By: Chris Horton, Bloomberg News
Members of National Defense Honor Guard march during National Day celebrations in Taipei, Taiwan, on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2020. Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen called for dialogue with Beijing while vowing to defend the island in the face of Chinese intimidation. , Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) — The more China tells the world that Taiwan isn’t a country, the more Beijing’s adversaries are starting to treat it like one.
Ahead of Taiwan’s National Day on Saturday, Beijing’s embassy in New Delhi was reported to have issued a letter telling India’s media not to refer to it as a country or to Tsai Ing-wen as its president. Indians responded by helping the hashtag #TaiwanNationalDay go viral while banners with the Taiwanese flag were hung outside the Chinese embassy.
“Hats off to friends from around the world this year, #India in particular, for celebrating #TaiwanNationalDay,” Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu wrote in a Twitter post on Saturday.
Instead of marking Taiwan’s independence, a red line that Beijing has warned could trigger an invasion, the day commemorates a 1911 uprising in the central Chinese city of Wuhan against China’s last imperial dynasty. That led to the creation of the Republic of China, which leader Chiang Kai-shek then brought to Taiwan seven decades ago when he fled Beijing as the Communist Party took power. [FULL STORY]
