DPP only hastening the inevitable by colluding with foreign forces: China Daily editorial

The visit to China's Taiwan island by Japanese lawmakers is a violation of China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and blatant interference in China's internal affairs. There is no reason for China to accept such a provocation without taking countermeasures.

The fact that the visit was made days after a talk was held between Japan's national security adviser, Takeo Akiba, and China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, to shore up relations between the two countries makes the visit especially egregious.

The Japanese government's acquiescence to this visit speaks volumes about its lack of respect for the norms of international relations and its lack of a due sense of responsibility for peace and development in the region.

What is particularly ludicrous and absurd is that Keiji Furuya, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker of Japan and chairperson of the Japan-ROC Diet Members' Consultative Council, in a tweet before his visit to Taiwan accused China of posing a risk to the peace and safety of not only Taiwan, but also East Asia as a whole by holding military drills around the island.

The military drills had been necessitated by the provocation of Nancy Pelosi, the US House speaker, who visited the island in defiance of all the reassurances the US administration had given Beijing that the US still honored the commitments it had made on Taiwan.

The Japanese lawmakers' visit to the island will certainly increase tensions across the Taiwan Straits, as it sends the signal to secessionists on the island that Tokyo stands behind Washington in using the island as a means to keep Beijing on the back foot. It will therefore only encourage Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party to go further in its attempts to seek the island's de facto "independence".

Tsai Ing-wen and her DPP followers should be aware that they are playing with matches on a powder keg by colluding with foreign forces in their attempt to cleave the island from the motherland.

And Tsai and the other secessionists on the island should not take it for granted that those countries whose officials they are receiving will be so willing to be dragged into their folly when they leave Beijing with no other option but to realize national reunification by force.

Those visiting politicians are simply opportunists exploiting cross-Straits tensions with self-serving political stunts.

Their visits will in no way change or pose a challenge to the international consensus that there is but one China of which the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legitimate representative.

Nor will such visits prevent the reunification of Taiwan with its motherland, which will be realized by whatever means necessary. Indeed, they only make the Chinese government and its people even more determined to fulfill this mission.

No foreign intervention will be able to forestall the inevitable declaration of "mission accomplished".