{"id":381171,"date":"2026-01-01T09:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T09:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/381171\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T09:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T09:06:07","slug":"xi-jinping-vows-to-reunify-china-and-taiwan-in-new-years-eve-speech-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/381171\/","title":{"rendered":"Xi Jinping vows to reunify China and Taiwan in New Year\u2019s Eve speech | China"},"content":{"rendered":"

China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping<\/a>, has vowed to reunify China and Taiwan in his annual New Year\u2019s Eve speech in Beijing.<\/p>\n

Speaking the day after the conclusion of intense Chinese military drills<\/a> around Taiwan, Xi said: \u201cThe reunification of our motherland, a trend of the times, is unstoppable.\u201d<\/p>\n

China claims Taiwan<\/a>, a self-governing island, as part of its territory and has long vowed to annex it, using force if necessary.<\/p>\n

US intelligence is increasingly concerned about the advancing capabilities of China\u2019s armed forces to launch such an attack if Xi decides the time is right.<\/p>\n

On Monday and Tuesday, China\u2019s People\u2019s Liberation Army launched live-fire military drills<\/a> around Taiwan, simulating a blockade of main ports and sending its navy, air force, rocket force and coastguard to encircle Taiwan\u2019s main island. The drills, called \u201cJustice Mission 2025\u201d, came closer to Taiwan than previous exercises, and involved at least 200 warplanes across the two days, the highest tally for more than a year. Taiwan said 27 missiles were also fired towards Taiwan, with several landing within 27 nautical miles of its coastline.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday the drills had ended but Taiwan remained on high alert, with 25 Chinese Navy and Coast Guard ships still around Taiwan, and two surveillance balloons were dispatched with one flying across Taiwan\u2019s northern coast line.<\/p>\n

The drills were expected by analysts before the year\u2019s end but were also connected by Chinese commentators to a recent arms approval by the US government for a record $11bn (\u00a38bn) weapons sales to Taiwan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking in Beijing on Wednesday evening, Xi said China \u201cembraced the world with open arms\u201d and highlighted several multilateral conferences hosted by Beijing this year, including the Shanghai Cooperation Summit<\/a> in August, when world leaders including Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin, India\u2019s Narendra Modi and Turkey\u2019s Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan<\/a>, gathered in Tianjin, a port city near Beijing.<\/p>\n

The broadcast of Xi\u2019s speech on Chinese state media was interspersed with several shots of China\u2019s largest ever military parade<\/a>, which was held in September to mark 80 years since the end of the second world war. During the parade, which was viewed as an unbridled display of military force, Xi, Putin and North Korea\u2019s leader, Kim Jong-un, stood side by side in Beijing \u2013 a geopolitical alignment that has been called the \u201caxis of upheaval\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n

Central to Xi\u2019s vision of a new world order is the annexation of Taiwan and the support of other countries in recognising Taiwan as part of \u201cOne China\u201d ruled by the Chinese Communist party in Beijing, something that the majority of Taiwanese people reject.<\/p>\n

However several governments criticised China\u2019s drills this week, including the UK, Japan, Australia, the Philippines, the EU and the US. China\u2019s foreign ministry said it had lodged \u201cserious protests\u201d over their remarks, erroneously claiming that those nations\u2019 domestic policies recognised Taiwan as part of China.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is \u2018Taiwan independence\u2019 forces\u2019 separatist activities and external connivance and support for these activities,\u201d the ministry\u2019s spokesman Lin Jian said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

In his speech, Xi also highlighted \u201cTaiwan Retrocession Day\u201d, a memorial day created in 2025 to mark the anniversary of the end of Japanese imperial rule in Taiwan in 1945. This year, Taiwan also passed a law to recognise the date, 25 October, as a national holiday. The legacy of the second world war has been a big theme in political rhetoric in China and Taiwan this year. China has emphasised its role in defeating the Japanese in that conflict, something that China feels has been underappreciated in the west. Taiwan\u2019s president, Lai Ching-te, gave a punchy speech<\/a> this year comparing Taiwan to European democracies in the 1930s that faced a threat from Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n

In his own New Year\u2019s Day address on Thursday morning, Lai again warned of China\u2019s \u201crising expansionary ambitions\u201d and vowed to \u201cstaunchly defend national sovereignty\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also urged opposition parties in Taiwan \u2013 which control the parliament \u2013 to stop blocking a special bill which would increase Taiwan\u2019s defence budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cFacing China\u2019s alarming military ambitions, Taiwan has no time to wait and certainly no time to consume ourselves with internal strife,\u201d Lai said.<\/p>\n

Xi\u2019s speech also praised China\u2019s progress in hi-tech development<\/a> this year, mentioning kickboxing robots<\/a> and Tianwen-2, a comet exploration mission that launched in May. He also flagged the global success of Chinese cultural exports, such as the video game Black Myth: Wukong<\/a> and the animated film Ne Zha 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the day, Xi addressed a meeting of top Chinese Communist party officials and said that China was on track to meet its 5% GDP growth target.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping, has vowed to reunify China and Taiwan in his annual New Year\u2019s Eve speech…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-381171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}