BEJING, Apr 6 China considers Taiwan chief's transit trip in the United States as yet another provocation, Beijing will take decisive action to punish Taiwanese separatists, the Taiwan Affairs Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China said in a statement Thursday.
Earlier Wednesday, Taiwan's Chief of Staff Tsai Ing-wen, who is returning to the island after visiting Taipei-friendly Guatemala and Belize in transit through the US, met with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
«This is yet another provocative move by the leadership of the Taiwan Democratic Progressive Party to further collude with the United States and rely on Washington's support for independence. We strongly condemn and intend to take decisive action to punish the separatist forces who advocate Taiwan independence,» the statement said.
It is also noted that Beijing intends to resolutely protect the state sovereignty and territorial integrity of China.
The situation around Taiwan escalated significantly after a visit to the island in early August last year by then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. China, which considers the island one of its provinces, condemned Pelosi's visit, seeing in this move US support for Taiwanese separatism, and held large-scale military exercises.
Official relations between the central government of the People's Republic of China and its island province were interrupted in 1949 after the Kuomintang forces led by Chiang Kai-shek, defeated in a civil war with the Communist Party of China, moved to Taiwan. Business and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the parties began to contact through non-governmental organizations — the Beijing Association for the Development of Relations across the Taiwan Strait and the Taipei Foundation for Cross-Strait Exchanges.