China is the real threat, Taiwan says in rebuff to Munich speech

TAIPEI, Feb 15 (Reuters) – China is the real threat to security and is hypocritically claiming to uphold U.N. principles of peace, Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said on Sunday in a rebuff to comments by China’s top diplomat at the Munich Security Conference.

China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, a view the government in Taipei rejects, saying only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, addressing the annual security conference on Saturday, warned that some countries were “trying to split Taiwan from China”, blamed Japan for tensions over the island and underscored the importance of upholding the United Nations Charter.

Taiwan’s Lin said in a statement that whether viewed from historical facts, objective reality or under international law, Taiwan’s sovereignty has never belonged to the People’s Republic of China.

Lin said that Wang had “boasted” of upholding the purposes of the U.N. Charter and had blamed other countries for regional tensions.

“In fact, China has recently engaged in military provocations in surrounding areas and has repeatedly and openly violated U.N. Charter principles on refraining from the use of force or the threat of force,” Lin said. This “once again exposes a hegemonic mindset that does not match its words with its actions.”

China’s military, which operates daily around Taiwan, staged its latest round of mass war games near Taiwan in December.

Senior Taiwanese officials like Lin are not invited to attend the Munich conference.

China says Taiwan was “returned” to Chinese rule by Japan at the end of World War Two in 1945 and that to challenge that is to challenge the postwar international order and Chinese sovereignty.

The government in Taipei says the island was handed over to the Republic of China, not the People’s Republic, which did not yet exist, and hence Beijing has no right to claim sovereignty.

The republican government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists, and the Republic of China remains the island’s formal name.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by William Mallard)