China: Taiwan Using Ukrainian Crisis for 'Political Manipulations'

BEIJING (Sputnik) – Taiwan is taking advantage of the situation in Ukraine for political manipulations, Zhu Fenglian, spokeswoman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's State Council, said on Wednesday, adding that such actions are bound to fail.

"Their attempts to incite confrontation and cause enmity through political manipulation will not succeed,” she said when asked to comment on Taipei's Tuesday decision to provide up to $11.5 million in humanitarian funding to Ukrainian refugees in Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary hosting those fleeing from Ukraine.

According to Zhu, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party is using the Ukrainian issue as a means to justify its existence and achieve independence.

The Ukrainian and Taiwanese issues significantly differ, since the island is an integral part of China, thus, the Taiwanese issue is an exclusively internal affair, the spokeswoman noted, stressing that Beijing will not tolerate any foreign meddling.

Taiwan has been governed independently from mainland China since 1949. Beijing views the island as its province, while Taiwan, which is a territory with its own democratically-elected government, maintains that it is an autonomous country.