Foreign Minister Wu gives exclusive interview to The New York Times

2024/01/15

Foreign Minister Jaushieh Joseph Wu cautioned the world against China’s attempts to interfere with not only Taiwan’s but also other democracies’ elections as well as the country’s intentions to challenge the rules-based international order.
 
Wu made the remarks during an exclusive interview with Nicholas Kristof for the article “When Democracy Is a Threat” published Jan. 10 in The New York Times in the lead-up to Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections.
 
According to Wu, China has attempted to manipulate the results of each election through military threats and economic coercion since Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996. This time Beijing is even portraying the Jan. 13 elections as a choice between war or peace and recession or prosperity to sway Taiwan’s voters, he said.
 
China is using Taiwan to test its autocratic influence, and if Beijing succeeds in manipulating Taiwan’s democratic processes, it will employ the same tactics in other parts of the free world, Wu asserted.
 
The minister went on to refute Beijing’s misinterpretation of U.N. Resolution 2758 and false claim that Taiwan is China’s internal affair. The People’s Republic of China has never governed Taiwan, he said, adding that Taiwan is a democracy, a fact widely recognized by the international community and one its people have no intention of changing.
 
China’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific poses a threat to regional peace and stability, leading the U.S. and its like-minded partners to launch multilateral dialogues like the U.S.-Japan-South Korea Trilateral Leaders’ Summit at Camp David to deal with possible conflicts, Wu said.
 
Wu additionally stated that China is spreading disinformation to undermine Taiwanese people’s trust in the U.S. He urged the democratic world to continue supporting Ukraine to show authoritarian regimes that waging war leads to serious repercussions. 


Source: Noticias de Taiwan (https://taiwantoday.tw/index.php)