‘We are not scared’: Taiwan’s foreign minister says

• Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu says danger from China is “more serious than ever”.
• Taiwan will stand hard to safeguard its freedom and democracy, he said.
• Wu’s tough statement came as China warned it will resume military exercises.

Taiwan’s danger from China is “more serious than ever,” but the island will stand hard to safeguard its freedom and democracy, including by embracing people who support it, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said in an interview with CNN on Monday.

Wu’s tough statement came as China warned it will resume military exercises surrounding the self-governing island, after a four-day show of force in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei last week.

“China has always been threatening Taiwan for years and it’s getting more serious in the last few years,”  Wu added. “”Whether Speaker Pelosi visits Taiwan or not, the Chinese military threat against Taiwan has always been there and that is the fact that we need to deal with.”

Welcoming abroad friends to the island was an important component of Taiwan’s plan to oppose China’s efforts to isolate it from the world community, Wu said, regardless of the possible response from Beijing.

“(China) cannot dictate to Taiwan that we should not welcome anyone who likes to come and show support for Taiwan,”  Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister since 2018, said.

Pelosi’s journey to Taiwan, the first by a sitting House Speaker in 25 years, was strongly opposed by China’s governing Communist Party, which considers Taiwan to be its territory despite never having governed it.

Following Pelosi’s visit, Beijing increased pressure on Taiwan, notably via economic sanctions, the firing of missiles over the island for the first time, and exercises that Taipei claims were designed to “simulate” an assault on its main island and fleet.

Despite the fact that the exercises were supposed to stop on Sunday, the Chinese military said on Monday that they will continue.

However, although the live-fire exercises heightened world concerns about a potential military clash, life in Taiwan continued as normal, with filled eateries and jammed public transportation.

According to Wu, the danger has made it more more important for Taiwan to maintain its foreign contacts and demonstrate that it is not fearful.

“I worry that China may really launch a war against Taiwan,” he said. “But what it is doing right now is trying to scare us and the best way to deal with it (is) to show to China that we are not scared.”

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