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Xi says China will ‘surely be reunified’ with Taiwan in New Year’s address

Chinese President Xi Jinping said China would “surely be reunified” with Taiwan during his televised New Year’s address.

“China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose,” Xi said in his annual address, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

China has described Taiwan’s Jan. 13 leader and parliamentary elections as a choice between war and peace.

Beijing considers the election front-runner, William Lai, who currently serves as No. 2 from the ruling Democratic People’s Party, a “separatist” and has accused him and Taiwan’s leader Tsai Ing-
-wen of trying to provoke a Chinese attack on the island.

On Saturday, Chen Binhua, spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, called Lai a “destroyer of peace” following a televised debate earlier that day in which Lai defended Taiwan’s right to rule itself as a democracy.

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