“Our goal is to achieve peaceful development of relations across the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan is a peace-loving country and its people are kind,” Lai said on the 66th anniversary of the start of the massive bombing of Kinmen by mainland China.
“We will not try to reconquer mainland China, but we also do not want to be governed by the Communist Party. Taiwan wants to continue to live a life of democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law,” he added.
Lai, considered “an independentist” by Beijing authorities, went to Kinmen accompanied by his Defense Minister, Wellington Koo, and senior officers of the Taiwanese Army, who participated in a wreath-laying ceremony in honor of those killed in the conflict. from 1958.
During a lunch with officers, soldiers and families of veterans of that battle, Lai called for “determination” to protect Taiwan and the outlying archipelagos of Kinmen, Matsu and Penghu from “the threat from China, which is no less than in previous years.”
The island leader insisted that China “has an even deeper goal in trying to take Taiwan,” which is to “change the rules-based international order, not just in the Western Pacific, but around the world.”
“When the August 23 attack occurred, I was not yet born and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) [in power in Taiwan] had not yet been founded. This clearly shows that China’s attempt to conquer Taiwan is not because of what a Taiwanese person or political party says,” Lai said.
“The officers and soldiers who participated in the battle did not distinguish between east, west, south or north, or between ethnicities; military and civilians fought together. In the future, if we want to resist the threat from China, we have to be united”, he highlighted.
The Kinmen Islands, located a few kilometers from the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen and 180 kilometers from the main island of Taiwan, have been one of the main sources of tension between Taipei and Beijing since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.
The height of this friction occurred on August 23, 1958, when the communist army launched a massive bombing raid on Kinmen and some islands in the Matsu archipelago, in what became known as the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
The conflict, which was the last large-scale military confrontation between China and Taiwan, caused hundreds of deaths and was followed by sporadic bombings between the two sides until 1979, when the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Taipei to establish them with Beijing. .
However, the tension around Kinmen has not disappeared: on February 14, a boat from China illegally entered the waters of the archipelago and two of its four crew members died after a chase by the Taiwan Coast Guard, which led to an increase in Chinese Coast Guard patrols in the area.
The Taiwanese government proposed on Thursday to increase the defense budget to an “all-time high” of 647 billion Taiwan dollars (more than 18 billion euros) by 2025, which will represent around 2.45% of gross domestic product ( GDP) next year, to contain the growing military threats from China, which considers the island its province, to be reunified by force if necessary.
