China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi says Taiwan has no diplomatic future, pointing to the self-ruled island’s diminishing number of formal allies across the globe.

Speaking on Wednesday at his annual news conference on the sidelines of the ongoing meeting of China’s parliament, Wang reiterated that there was only one China in the world and that Taiwan was part of China, adding that the notion was the international community’s consensus.

“The Taiwan region establishing or maintaining so-called diplomatic ties with any country lacks a basis in international law, has no legitimacy, and inevitably has no future,” said the foreign minister.

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen (photo by AFP)

China has exerted increasing pressure on self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a breakaway province, since Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party rose to power following a presidential election victory in Taiwan in 2016.

Wang went on to say, “The Taiwan authority should be clear about this trend of events. No person and no force can stop China from finally achieving total national unification.”

China resumed ties with former Taiwan ally Gambia last March, shortly after Tsai won the election. Also in December last year, the West African state of Sao Tome and Principe abandoned Taipei for Beijing.

Taiwan used to have as many as 30 diplomatic allies in the mid-1990s, but currently, it maintains official ties with only 21 nations, most of them smaller and poorer countries in Latin America and the Pacific.

Meanwhile, Beijing remains deeply suspicious of Tsai, believing that she intends to press for the island’s formal independence — which constitutes a red line for China.