China has urged the US to maintain the status quo and withdraw troops out of Taiwan, after Wall Street Journal’s report that said, the US has been secretly training Taiwanese forces for at least a year.
Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, urged the United States to uphold the consensus that led Washington to sever ties with Taipei in favour of Beijing more than four decades ago, including the termination of the formal security pact. Zhao was responding to reports that about a dozen American military advisers had been deployed to the island on Friday.
“The One China principle is the political foundation of China and U.S. relations,” Zhao told reporters, Bloomberg reported.
“The U.S. must sever diplomatic relations and abrogate its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan and U.S. forces must withdraw from Taiwan.” the Chinese spokesman added.
“The U.S. has made its clear commitment to China,” Zhao said on Friday. “In his phone call with President Xi Jinping, President Biden emphasized that it has no intention to change the One China principle.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, about two dozen US special forces soldiers and an unspecified number of marines are training Taiwanese forces. The trainers were initially sent to Taiwan by former President Donald Trump’s administration, but their presence had not been reported until now.
The report comes as Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen stated on Friday that the country will “do whatever it takes to defend its freedom and democratic way of life.”
According to the Guardian, Pentagon spokesman John Supple would not comment directly on the report, but said that “our support for and defence relationship with Taiwan remains aligned against the current threat” from China.
Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper, urged the US to reveal the location of the troops, implying that doing so would facilitate a Chinese attack. “See whether the PLA will launch a targeted air strike to eliminate those US invaders!” he said in a tweet.