No change in Taiwan policy, say government sources after Beijing’s claim

The government on Tuesday (August 19, 2025) stressed that it has not changed its policy on Taiwan after a Chinese Foreign Ministry readout claimed that External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had, in his meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yisaid that Taiwan belonged to China.

The readout, issued in Mandarin Chinese on Monday evening (August 18, 2025), was also released in English on Tuesday (August 19, 2025).

Also read | India, China ties showing positive trend, says Chinese FM Wang Yi

The differences over the comment represented a prickly moment in an otherwise productive two-day visit by the Chinese Foreign Minister to India, his first since 2021, and ahead of a visit to China by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Tianjin on August 31, 2025.

“Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said that under the joint guidance of leaders of both countries, India-China relations have moved from the bottom and are continuously improving and developing, with exchanges and cooperation between the two sides across various fields moving toward normalisation,” the readout issued in Beijing said.

“Stable, cooperative, and forward-looking India-China relations serve the interests of both countries. Taiwan is part of China,” the statement added.

It is understood that while Mr. Jaishankar had discussed India’s ties with Taiwan, he had not used the phrase attributed to him.

In a statement issued at the end of Mr. Wang’s visit, the Ministry of External Affairs said that the Chinese side had “raised” the issue of Taiwan. “The Indian side underlined that there was no change in its position on this issue,” the Ministry said.

“It pointed out that, like the rest of the world, India had a relationship with Taiwan that focuses on economic, technological and cultural ties and that this would continue,” the statement said, adding that China also cooperates with Taiwan in these very domains.

India does not recognise Taiwan as the ‘Republic of China’ but maintains a representative mission in Taipei that coordinates economic and cultural ties, and the Taiwan government maintains the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in Delhi.

While India had originally accepted the ‘One China policy’ that accords all of China to the People’s Republic of China, it has stayed away from stating this directly since 2010. In particular, the previous Manmohan Singh government had stopped reaffirming the ‘One China policy’ in protest over China’s decision of issuing ‘stapled visas’ for Indians from Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir, claiming these were disputed territories. The policy continued after the Narendra Modi government came to power in 2014, despite requests from the Chinese government. According to officials, former External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had even told her counterpart that China should respect the ‘One India policy’ if it wished for India to affirm the ‘One China policy’.