Question: The US side claimed that China is unilaterally changing the Taiwan status quo. What is your comment?

Embassy Spokesperson: This is an outright lie and slander. Taiwan has never been a country. There is only one China in the world, and both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to the one and the same China. This has been the status quo of Taiwan since ancient times. The China-US Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations in 1979 stressed that the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal Government of China and that Taiwan is part of China. This has been the status quo of the Taiwan Strait for decades.

But this status quo has been broken, not by China, but by the US and the separatist forces in Taiwan. In 2000, the US put it own so-called Taiwan Relations Act” before the three China-US Joint Communiqués. A couple of years ago, the US inserted the so-called “Six Assurances to Taiwan”, something it had long kept secret, into its formulation of the one-China policy. This was an attempt to change the status quo and to hollow out its one-China policy. We advise the US authorities to take a careful look at the three China-US joint communiqués, and then they will have a clear understanding of what the cross-Strait status quo really is and who is the one that is changing the status quo.

We will not allow the US to continue to use salami tactics to encroach upon, obscure and hollow out the one-China principle. We will not allow the US to use any pretext or excuse to gradually change the status quo.