Chinese embassy in US protests against Washington Post's Taiwan-related op-ed - China.org.cn

The Chinese Embassy in the United States has sent a letter to the editorial board of The Washington Post in protest of an op-ed carried recently by the newspaper that absurdly related the Taiwan question to the ongoing Ukraine crisis.

Sent by Minister Counselor Zhu Haiquan, chief of the political section of the Chinese embassy, the letter -- part of which appeared in the Opinion section of The Post's website - was a solemn response to the op-ed authored by Bi-khim Hsiao dated March 24 and titled "Ukraine has inspired Taiwan. We must stand against authoritarianism," which used the Ukraine issue to distort the fact that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one and the same China.

"The Taiwan question and the Ukraine crisis are totally different in nature. Ukraine is sovereign state, and the Ukraine crisis is a conflict between sovereign countries, while Taiwan is part of China's territory, and the Taiwan question is a Chinese internal affair," Zhu wrote in the letter.

"Taiwan has been and will always be an inalienable part of China's territory. It is not an independent sovereign state," he said.

Combing through historical facts confirming and reaffirming Taiwan's status since World War II neared its end, Zhu wrote that "the 1943 Cairo Declaration states that Taiwan shall be restored to China. The 1945 Potsdam Proclamation reaffirms that the terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out. Since the People's Republic of China was founded and became the sole legal Government representing the whole of China, Taiwan has indisputably become part of China. The (United Nations General Assembly) Resolution 2758 has further confirmed Taiwan's status. These are ironclad facts."