'Of course' Taiwan is a country, says President William Lai, China refutes this

Taiwan's President William Lai Ching Te said on Jun. 22 that Taiwan is "of course a country", and that China has "no historical or legal proof" to back up its claims of sovereignty over the self-ruled island, Reuters reported.

Lai was speaking in the first of ten planned speeches in a series called "uniting the country", where Lai would draw on Taiwan's history, including the millennia-long connection of its indigenous people to other Austronesians, like native Hawaiians, to depict Taiwan's separate and distinct development from China.

The statement came as a rebuke to Beijing's stepped up political and military pressure on Taiwan since Lai took office in May 2024.

China has held at least three round of major war games around Taiwan, threatened the death penalty for "diehard" supporters of its independence, and called Lai a dangerous "separatist".

Lai also said on Jun. 25 that Taiwan's future can only be decided by its people, democratically, not by any president or government.

He said that "Taiwan independence" means that the island is not a part of the People's Republic of China.

China cannot invade Taiwan because Taiwan is part of China: Chinese spokesperson

In response to Lai's comment on Sunday, China's Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian told news reporters in Beijing on Jun. 25, "Taiwan is a part of China; there is no invasion to speak of."

She also warned that any independence provocations from Lai and his administration will face "resolute countermeasures", Reuters reported.

"Though the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have not yet been fully reunified, the historical and legal fact that compatriots on both sides belong to one China and that both sides' compatriots are Chinese has never changed", she added.

Chinese mainstream media People's Daily further slammed Lai's speech, calling it "full of various factual errors and historical fallacies".

"It was a ‘Taiwan independence’ declaration that blatantly incited cross-strait confrontation, and a hodgepodge of ‘Taiwan independence’ fallacies and heresies full of errors and omissions", it wrote.

China has long claimed Taiwan to be a part of China, saying it is "sacred" Chinese territory that has belonged to China since ancient times as one of its provinces.

On the other hand, Lai said that Taiwan has a long history of "opposing invasion".

He added that Taiwan was only briefly considered a Chinese province for eight years under the Qing Dynasty, China's last imperial dynasty.

War games

China's latest war games were held in around Taiwan on Apr. 2 2025, during which it held long-range, live-fire drills in the East China Sea over a two-day period, allegedly to test the troops' "integrated joint operations capabilities".

Taiwan denounced China for holding the drills. Its defence ministry also activated its own "rapid response exercise" in response, claiming that it was needed to heighten alerts against a sudden Chinese move.

The rising tensions between both countries have raised the possibility that Beijing may eventually act on its threats to invade and claim Taiwan by force, which could ignite a regional war, Reuters said.

Top image via William Lai Facebook.