Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
President Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen admit that China become much more assertive, ambitious, and expansionist, under the leadership of the President Xi Jinping.
Tsai stated that China’s threat to silence Taiwan, which wants to remain independent, continues to increase every day.
“They (China) are more ambitious, more expansionist. And because of that things that were acceptable to them (before Xi took office), may not be acceptable to them (China) now,” Tsai said in an interview with CNN.
Tsai realizes the Chinese threat continues to increase every day. It says he and 23 million Taiwanese are working to protect themselves and democracy from Chinese threats on a daily basis.
Tsai took office as Taiwan’s President in 2016 also to coincide with China’s rise to the hands of President Xi Jinping.
Since Xi took office in 2013, China has changed a lot. Xi is even considered the most powerful Chinese leader in recent decades.
Since his second term in office in 2017, Xi has begun to change the way China has positioned itself as a global power that increasingly rivals the United States. The Chinese state continues to grow larger and more advanced in various sectors ranging from the economy to the military.
In that period, China was even able to overtake the US as the country with the largest naval fleet in the world.
On Sunday, Xi said China’s military “needs to break new ground” in weapons development.
Not only is it aggressive about Taiwan, which has been considered an opposition territory, China is also trying to control most of the South China Sea region which is now a dispute and a source of conflict with countries in Southeast Asia.
Despite all the Chinese threats that Taiwan has faced so far, Tsai admitted that he still opened the door to sit together and have a dialogue with Xi.
“I would encourage him (Xi) to have more dialogue with the Taiwanese government and citizens so that they can experience what Taiwan is like and of course we also want to do more to understand the situation in China,” Tsai said.
“We keep saying again and again that we want dialogue with China and we think this is the best way to avoid misunderstandings, miscalculations and misjudgments in dealing with Beijing-Taipei relations,” he added.
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