The US has invited Taiwan to participate in a “democracy summit” as part of Washington’s “unofficial relationship” with Taipei, a senior White House official said.
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“They were invited again, which is in line with our informal relationship and the one-China policy of the United States, which has not changed,” he told reporters when asked about inviting Taiwan.
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The administration official added that Taiwan has been invited to the first such summit in 2021.
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The United States, along with Zambia, Costa Rica, the Netherlands and South Korea, officially kick off the second “Democracy Summit” on Wednesday, where representatives from 120 states are invited to “show progress on agreements to build more sustainable democracies” and “make new promises” the growth of prosperity and the protection of freedoms.
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On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning called on the United States to stop interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, drawing ideological lines, provoking a split in the world, desecrating and violating the spirit of democracy. Beijing made it clear that the world today should not “create discord in the name of democracy” but “strengthen solidarity and cooperation on the basis of the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.”
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Official relations between the central government of the PRC and its island province were interrupted in 1949, when 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.
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Since the early 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 Cross-Strait Exchange Foundation.
