‘Cheap trick’: China rebuffs Taiwan’s latest offer for talks | Al Jazeera

China has rebuffed the latest offer of talks from Taiwan, saying the government was engaging in a “cheap trick” and provocation, claiming the island was seeking confrontation with China at every turn.

Taiwan is ready to have “meaningful dialogue under the principles of parity and dignity” with China provided Beijing is willing to put aside confrontation, President Tsai Ing-wen said on Friday in her New Year’s speech.

China views the self-governing democracy as its own territory, and cut off a formal talks mechanism in 2016 after Tsai was first elected, claiming she was a separatist bent on a formal declaration of independence.

In a statement late on Friday, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said there was no way of changing the reality that the island was part of China, and the refusal of Taiwan’s government to accept that was the root cause of present tensions.

Since 2016, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) “has continued to provoke by seeking independence, confronting the mainland at every turn, deliberately creating confrontation across the Taiwan Strait”, it said.