China holds 'powerful' committee moot of ruling party

ISTANBUL

A four-day session of the Central Committee of China's one-party regime started on Monday, with President Xi Jinping delivering a report on the Communist Party of China's (CPC) centennial, state-run media reported.

In its 19th session that will continue until Thursday, members of the committee will deliberate on "major achievements and historical experience" of the CPC's "100 years of endeavors."

Besides his role as the country's president, Xi also serves as general secretary of the Central Committee, the main organ of the ruling party that decides to implement most of its decisions.

In an earlier statement, the committee had said: "The CPC has led all ethnic groups of the country in making remarkable achievements over the past 100 years in the history of human development."

"Chinese people who had suffered subjugation and bullying since the advent of modern times had stood up. The Chinese nation is advancing toward modernization on all fronts and socialism has blazed a successful trail in the world's most populous country," the statement said.

The meeting comes amid China's increasing tensions with the US over Taiwan, with Beijing accusing Western countries of meddling in its "internal affairs."

"Taiwan independence is a dead end, and dollar diplomacy has no way out," Wang Wenbin, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on Monday, referring to increasing communications between Taipei and western capitals.

Beijing claims Taiwan, an island nation of some 24 million people, as a breakaway province, while Taipei has insisted on its independence since 1949 and has diplomatic relations with at least 15 countries.

However, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that the status quo on Taiwan "serves the interests of China, Taiwan and the United States as well as the security and stability of the region."

Underlining that the US continues to adhere to the one-China policy and Taiwan Relations Act, Sullivan said the US opposes any unilateral change to the status quo and is concerned about Chinese activities that have "shaken, to a certain extent, the security and stability of cross-(Taiwan) Strait relations."

The US formally recognized China in 1979 and shifted diplomatic relations from Taipei to Beijing, including Taiwan as part of mainland China.

The Taiwan Relations Act, a 1979 law, has guided US relations with Taiwan. Ties have also been informed by what is known as the Three Communiques, which are bilateral agreements with China.

"Under the Taiwan Relations Act," Sullivan replied to Farid Zakaria on his GPS show, "we (US) have a responsibility to provide defense articles to Taiwan for their defense. We have a responsibility to help them protect and defend their own security and we have done so over the course of many years and we continue to do so under the Biden administration."

Taiwan has purchased billions of dollars of arms and weaponry from the former Donald Trump administration and the sales continue while US soldiers are "training" Taiwanese counterparts on the island nation and in the Pacific Island nation of Guam.

Through a "combination of deterrence and diplomacy," said Sullivan, "our fundamental objective is to avoid a circumstance in which there is a unilateral change to the status quo, whether it is an outright invasion or something short of that."