People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family, no one can stop the historical trend of reunification of the motherland, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in his New Year’s address.
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“We will unswervingly pursue the policy of ‘one country, two systems’, maintain the long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and Macau. Compatriots on both sides of the (Taiwan) Straits are one family, no one can take away our blood and family ties, no one can stop the historical trend of reunification of the motherland,” Xi Jinping said.
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The address was broadcast by China Central Television.
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The situation around Taiwan worsened significantly after Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the US House of Representatives, visited the island in early August 2022. China, which considers the island one of its provinces, condemned Pelosi’s visit as US support for Taiwanese separatism and held large-scale military exercises.
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Official relations between the central government of China and its island province were interrupted in 1949 after the Kuomintang forces led by Chiang Kai-shek, defeated in the civil war with the Chinese Communist Party, moved to Taiwan. Business and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the parties began to contact through non-governmental organizations – the Beijing Association for the Development of Relations across the Taiwan Strait and the Taipei Cross-Strait Exchange Foundation.
