China says reunification with Taiwan ‘inevitable’

Taiwan's unification with the mainland is "inevitable", President Xi Jinping said Wednesday, warning against any efforts to promote the island's independence and saying China would not renounce the option of using military force to bring it into the fold. Xi's comments provoked a swift rebuke from Taipei, where President Tsai Ing-wen said Taiwan's people would never willingly give up the kind of democratic freedoms unseen on the mainland. China still sees democratic Taiwan as part of its territory to be reunified, despite the two sides being ruled separately since the end of a civil war in 1949.