China condemned Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te for "hell-bent on independence".
Earlier on October 10, Lai said during Taiwan's national holiday that he would oppose any attempt by Beijing to annex the island, AFP reported.
"Lai's speech reveals his hell-bent stance on Taiwan's independence and his sinister intention to escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait for political interests," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said.
China has not ruled out using force to bring the democratic island under its control, which Lai and his government oppose.
"Taiwan has never been a state and can never become one, so there is no so-called 'sovereignty,'" Mao said.
She added that Lai's comments "arbitrarily break the historical link between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait" and use "all kinds of tactics to spread the fantasy of Taiwan's independence."
In his speech, Lai pledged to defend the island's "national sovereignty."
But he also said that Taipei's efforts to maintain the "status quo of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait remain unchanged."
Beijing has stepped up pressure on Taiwan to accept its territorial claims and relations have remained strained under Lai, who took office in May.
A senior U.S. administration official said China could use the National Day celebration "as a pretext" for military exercises.
China maintains an almost daily military presence around Taiwan and has held three rounds of large-scale war games in the past two years, deploying aircraft and ships to encircle the island.
After Lai's speech, Beijing insisted that "Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory" and that reunification between the island and the mainland was "inevitable." | BGNES
