The UK and Poland underlined the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait in a joint declaration on foreign policy, security and defense published on Thursday.
The UK and Poland “emphasize that our basic positions on Taiwan remain unchanged, and reaffirm the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” the declaration said.
The document was signed by ministers from both sides — British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs James Cleverly; British Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace; Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Zbigniew Rau; and Polish Minister of National Defense Mariusz Blaszczak — after they met in London on Wednesday.
Photo: AP
The document sets out joint priorities on issues ranging from Belarus to China, to cooperation on defense capability and operations, the British government said.
The two states vowed to cooperate with their partners to support a free and open Indo-Pacific region and promote freedom, democracy and sovereignty, it said.
“Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security are inextricably linked,” it said.
They would challenge “malign actors seeking to destabilize the rules-based international order in the Indo-Pacific,” singling out “China and its increasing international assertiveness” as a “systemic challenge,” it added.
Through dialogue, the two sides will develop an understanding of “military-civil fusion, dual-use strategies, military modernization and the risks posed by China’s increasing overseas influence, particularly through military basing,” it said.
It urged Beijing “to comply with its international obligations,” including on human rights issues in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and not provide material assistance to Russia or Russian proxies in Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, it said.
The UK and Poland will support free and sustainable economic growth in the Indo-Pacific region, enhance information sharing and counter disinformation and academic interference, it said.
In other news, Lithuania in its new report on strategy on the Indo-Pacific region prioritized developing economic relations with Taiwan while condemning China’s economic and diplomatic coercion.
“The development of economic relations with Taiwan is one of Lithuania’s strategic priorities and a part of its economic diversification policy,” US news site Politico cited the strategy as saying in a report on Thursday.
The strategy was published on Wednesday as the European country prepares to host the NATO leaders’ summit on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, Politico reported.
The strategy report reaffirmed Lithuania’s partnership with Taiwan “in defiance of intense pressure from China to change course,” it said.
China is a “global economic and military power that has consolidated ever-intensifying autocratic control methods domestically and is exercising an increasingly aggressive foreign policy aimed at projecting its power externally,” the report said.
Beijing has imposed a series of political and economic sanctions against Lithuania after it allowed the Taiwanese office in Vilnius to bear the name “Taiwanese,” instead of “Taipei,” in 2021.
“Unsuccessful attempts by China to exert economic and diplomatic pressure on Lithuania proves that a country can withstand economic blackmail if it has built up societal resilience and has reliable partners,” the report said.
The strategy also urged against changing the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait by force or coercion, and vowed to help curtail China’s informational pressure against Taiwan, Politico reported.
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