China warned on Thursday that \u201cprovocations\u201d by Taiwan leader Lai Ching-te, who earlier gave a speech on the self-ruled island\u2019s National Day, would result in \u201cdisaster\u201d for its people. \u201c(Lai\u2019s) provocations in seeking \u2018independence\u2019 are the root cause of trouble for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and will bring disaster to the people of Taiwan,\u201d said Chen Binhua, a spokesman for China\u2019s Taiwan Affairs Office. China has not ruled out using force to bring the democratic island under its control, which Lai and his government oppose. Lai pledged in his speech to defend the island\u2019s \u201cnational sovereignty\u201d. But he also said Taipei\u2019s efforts to preserve the \u201cstatus quo of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait remain unchanged\u201d. Beijing has ramped up pressure on Taiwan to accept its territorial claims and relations have remained tense under Lai, who took office in May. China\u2019s foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular news briefing that Lai\u2019s speech \u201cexposed his hell bent position on Taiwan independence and his sinister intention to escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait for political self-interest\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China warned on Thursday that \u201cprovocations\u201d by Taiwan leader Lai Ching-te, who earlier gave a speech on the self-ruled island\u2019s National Day, would result in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20214,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}