‘Take back land from Russia first’: Taiwan president challenges China over territorial claims

TaiwanesePresidentLai Ching-te has challenged China to take back land from Russia if the Xi Jinping regime truly believes it has a claim over the island nation.

China claims self-ruled democratic Taiwan as a part of its territory with Jinpingnot renouncing the use of force to bring the island under control. Beijing is of the view that Taiwan had been part of China since ancient times but was taken away by Japan during the "century of humiliation" - a period between 1839 and 1949 when China was subjected to routine defeats and subjugation.

“If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t it take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun? Russia is now at its weakest, right?,” said Lai during an interview.

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“You can ask Russia (for the land back) but you don’t. So it’s obvious they don’t want to invade Taiwan for territorial reasons,” Lai said.

Lai was referring to the 1858 treaty in whichRussia annexed about one million sq km of Chinese territory, including Haishengwei – today known as Vladivostok.

Lai, who was elected president in January, said that Beijing's true plans for 'invading' Taiwan were geopolitical as Jinping wants to change the world order in his favour.

Chinese officials have repeatedly attended economic forums in the far-east city of Vladivostok and there have been no major claims from the Politburo to annex the region.

However, earlier this year, nationalist social media userson Weibo, an X-like Chinese social media platform, demanded that Russia return Vladivostok to China. The claims were intensified after Putin in an interview with former Fox News anchor, Tucker Carlson, reflected on how Ukraine was part a Russian territory since the beginning.

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Will China invade Taiwan?

Last week, Taiwan's defence ministry claimed that China lacks theability to "fully" invade the island nation but was bringing advanced new weapons and other options to threaten Taiwan.

"However, the use of tactics and strategies against Taiwan is still limited by the natural geographical environment of the Taiwan Strait and insufficient landing equipment and logistic capabilities," it said.

China is speeding up the development of a slew of new weapons, such as the H-20 bomber and hypersonic missiles and beefing up the number of nuclear warheads while testing new tactics, the ministry said.

(With inputs from agencies)