Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said Sunday that the self-governing island\u2019s democracy remains under direct threat from rival China, underscoring her calls for closer ties with the US and other allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tsai was speaking at a televised debate against Han Kuo-yu of the main opposition Nationalist Party and veteran politician James Soong of the People\u2019s First Party. Elections for president and the legislature are set for January 11. Most polls show Tsai leading in her quest for a second four-year term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tsai said she would preserve Taiwan\u2019s freedoms and way of life, but would make no changes to the constitution or the island\u2019s official name, the Republic of China, which moved its seat of government to Taipei, the island\u2019s capital, following the Communist Party\u2019s seizure of power on mainland China in 1949.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTaiwan\u2019s most pressing challenge arises from China\u2019s expanding ambitions,\u201d Tsai said. \u201cThe situation in our region is ever-more complex and Taiwan\u2019s sovereignty it\u2019s free, democratic way of life is under threat of being stripped away and undermined.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
currently holds a majority in the assembly, allowing her to pursue an agenda of economic reforms, partly intended to attract reinvestment from Taiwanese business groups based in China and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the debate, Han furthered his claims of facing opposition from the mainstream media and accused Tsai\u2019s backers of corruption. He described China\u2019s threat to use military force to bring Taiwan under its control as an abstraction and defended his previous dealings with Chinese authorities as necessary to ensure Taiwan\u2019s economic future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said Sunday that the self-governing island\u2019s democracy remains under direct threat from rival China, underscoring her calls for closer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77312,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77313,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77311\/revisions\/77313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}