China’s Xi emphasizes Taiwan reunification goals in New Year message

Beijing, Dec 31 (EFE).- China’s president Xi Jinping on Friday gave a New Year’s speech in which he said that the country’s “complete reunification” was an “aspiration shared by people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits.”

In his address, Xi listed China’s achievements in 2021, including the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party, over which he presides.

“Standing on the Tiananmen Rostrum, one could only marvel at the extraordinary journey of Chinese Communists leading the Chinese people in an unyielding struggle against all obstacles and challenges, and scoring spectacular achievements,” he said according to the state-run Global Times.

Following a year in which Beijing reinforced its control over Hong Kong, Xi added that the prosperity of the special-status Chinese territory, a former British colony, was “close to the heart of the motherland.”

Xi’s challenges in the coming year include putting the brakes on China’s economic decline and the 20th Communist Party Congress in autumn, in which he could seal a third term as leader of the Asian giant. EFE

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