Taiwan has a right to engage with the world and no \u200ccountry can stop that, President Lai Ching-te told Eswatini’s king after he arrived for a surprise trip that Taipei says Beijing tried to stop, as China condemned him as a “rat”.<\/p>\n
China views democratically governed Taiwan as part of its territory with \u200bno right to state-to-state ties, a position Taiwan’s government strongly disputes, and Beijing has \u200bdemanded countries stop any engagements with the island.<\/p>\n
Last month, Taiwan said China had\u00a0forced\u00a0\u2060three Indian Ocean countries to pull overflight permission for Lai’s aircraft to travel to the \u200bsmall southern African kingdom of Eswatini for the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession. It \u200bis one of only\u00a012 countries\u00a0with formal ties with Taipei.<\/p>\n
“The Republic of China, Taiwan, is a sovereign nation and a Taiwan that belongs to the world,” Lai told the king, referring to Taiwan’s official name, in comments \u200bprovided by the presidential office on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“The 23 million people of Taiwan have the right \u200bto engage with the world, and no country has the right \u2014 nor should any country attempt \u2014 to prevent \u200cTaiwan from \u2060contributing to the world.”<\/p>\n
Lai arrived in the former Swaziland, home to around 1.3 million people, on Saturday, on a trip neither government had announced beforehand, having taken an Eswatini government aircraft.<\/p>\n
The “arrive then announce” model is commonly used in high-level international diplomacy, minimising the “uncertain risks of potential interference from \u200bexternal forces”, a senior \u200bTaiwan security official \u2060said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.<\/p>\n
Late Saturday, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said Lai had “skulked” his way to \u200bEswatini.<\/p>\n
“Lai Ching-te’s despicable conduct \u2014 like a rat scurrying across the street \u2014 will \u200binevitably be \u2060met with ridicule by the international community,” a spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Taiwan’s China-policy making Mainland Affairs Council said Lai did not need Beijing’s permission to go anywhere.<\/p>\n
“The Taiwan Affairs Office’s fishwife’s gutter talk \u2060is \u200bboring in the extreme,” it added.<\/p>\n
Lai’s cancelled plans last month \u200bdue to the overflight problem had prompted\u00a0criticism\u00a0of China from the U.S., and concern from the European Union, Britain, France \u200band Germany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taiwan has a right to engage with the world and no \u200ccountry can stop that, President Lai Ching-te told Eswatini’s king after he arrived for a surprise trip that Taipei says Beijing tried to stop, as China condemned him as a “rat”. China views democratically governed Taiwan as part of its territory with \u200bno right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,30],"tags":[396,344,5029,3078],"class_list":["post-20746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-southern-africa","tag-china","tag-eswatini","tag-lai-ching-te","tag-taiwan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20748,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20746\/revisions\/20748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}