Reuters: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
TAIPEI – A group of Chinese officials arrived in Taiwan on Saturday on the first visit in three years, since the COVID-19 pandemic began, to attend a cultural event at a time of soaring military tensions across the Taiwan Strait.FILE PHOTO: Chinese and Taiwanese flags are seen in this illustration, August 6, 2022. REUTERS\/Dado Ruvic\/Illustration<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taiwan\u2019s government this week allowed the trip of six officials, lead by Liu Xiaodong, deputy head of the Shanghai office of China\u2019s Taiwan Affairs Office, to attend the Lantern Festival in Taipei, at the invitation of the city government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Liu, arriving at Taipei\u2019s downtown Songshan airport, did not answer questions from reporters and his group was ushered into a van under heavy security and driven away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A small group of around a dozen pro-Taiwan independence supporters protested his arrival outside the airport, shouting \u201cTaiwan and China, separate countries\u201d and \u201cChinese people, get out\u201d, while on the airport road another small group of pro-China supporters shouted their welcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chilly Chen, head of the pro-independence Taiwan Republic Office, told Reuters the Taiwanese people were very hospitable and welcomed visitors but were concerned they were coming to push Chinese policies on the democratic island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEverything China does is in the service of politics, and their aim is definitely united front,\u201d Chen added, referring to the name of China\u2019s policy to co-opt non-Communists and Taiwan\u2019s people in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taiwan\u2019s China-policy making Mainland Affairs Council said the group has been allowed to come as long as they keep a low profile and it hoped their visit would promote mutual understanding and \u201chealthy and orderly exchanges\u201d going forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reuters: TAIPEI – A group of Chinese officials arrived in Taiwan on Saturday on the first visit in three years, since the COVID-19 pandemic began, to attend a cultural event at a time of soaring military tensions across the Taiwan Strait.FILE PHOTO: Chinese and Taiwanese flags are seen in this illustration, August 6, 2022. REUTERS\/Dado Ruvic\/Illustration Taiwan\u2019s government this week allowed the trip of six officials, lead by Liu Xiaodong, deputy head of the Shanghai office of China\u2019s Taiwan Affairs Office, to attend the Lantern Festival in Taipei, at the invitation of the city government. Liu, arriving at Taipei\u2019s downtown… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30458,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30456\/revisions\/30458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}