China: ‘External interference’ on Taiwan won’t be tolerated

UNITED NATIONS — China underscored its commitment Saturday to its claim on Taiwan, telling assembled world leaders that anyone who gets in the way of its determination to reunify with the self-governing island would be “crushed by the wheels of history.”

The language was forceful but, for Chinese leadership, well within the realm of normal.

“Only when China is fully reunified can there be true peace across the Taiwan Strait,” Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said at the U.N. General Assembly. He said Beijing would “take the most forceful steps to oppose external interference.”

China regularly and vehemently defends its claim to Taiwan, which separated from the mainland after a 1949 civil war and now functions with its own government.

A visit last month by the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Beijing.

China exercises regular pressure worldwide on any entity— country, corporation, mapmaker — that even implies Taiwan might be a separate nation.