KINMEN
\nPeace can only be secured through strength and not even an inch of territory can be sacrificed, Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said on Sunday, visiting a sensitive frontline island to mark a key battle with Chinese forces almost seven decades ago.
\nTaiwan has controlled the Kinmen and Matsu islands, which lie just off the Chinese coast, since the Republic of China government fled to Taipei in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong\u2019s communists. No peace treaty or armistice has \u200cever been signed.
\nIn heavy \u200crain, Lai laid a wreath and bowed at \u200ca memorial park for the 68th anniversary of the 1958 clash with Chinese forces, known as the start of the second Taiwan Strait crisis \u2014 the last time Taiwanese and Chinese forces battled on a large scale. Addressing veterans later, Lai expressed gratitude to those who \u201cstood united and fought a bloody battle to repel Communist totalitarian aggression.\u201d
\n\u201cOur resolve to unite in defending national sovereignty and safeguarding peace across the Taiwan Strait must never waver,\u201d Lai said. \u201cPeace has never simply fallen from the sky.\u201d The 1958 battle \u200cproves \u201cthat peace is secured through strength,\u201d he \u200csaid, adding it was necessary to maintain \u201cthe spirit of never yielding an inch\u201d of Taiwan, \u200cKinmen and another group of islands, while continuously boosting military spending.
\nChina\u2019s Taiwan \u200cAffairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
\nChina views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has repeatedly denounced Lai as a \u201cseparatist.\u201d He rejects Beijing\u2019s sovereignty, saying only Taiwan\u2019s people can decide their future, but has also offered \u200ctalks with China.
\nKinmen at its closest is less than 2 km (1.2 miles) from Chinese-controlled territory. In the 1958 battle, Chinese forces began more than a month of bombardment of Kinmen, along with Matsu, including naval and air battles, seeking to force them into submission.
\nTaiwan fought back with support from the United States, though the crisis ended in a stalemate. Taiwan observes August 23 every year as the date it fended off the Chinese attack.China\u2019s coast guard has since early 2024 conducted regular \u201claw enforcement\u201d patrols around Kinmen in Taiwan-controlled waters, to Taipei\u2019s anger.
\nReferring to those patrols and other Chinese tactics, Lai said that for 68 years China had not stopped its \u201cambitions for external expansion for even a single day,\u201d bringing \u201cunease\u201d across the Indo-Pacific. Taiwan\u2019s planned defense spending next year will exceed T$1 trillion ($30 billion) for the first time, the government announced on Thursday, and Lai said he hoped for strong support for the budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KINMEN Peace can only be secured through strength and not even an inch of territory can be sacrificed, Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said on Sunday, visiting a sensitive frontline island to mark a key battle with Chinese forces almost seven decades ago. Taiwan has controlled the Kinmen and Matsu islands, which lie just off the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":102051,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102073,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102065\/revisions\/102073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}