Hurt tourists Chinese citizens: Beijing

When doctors were treating Gu Tse-wei and Ke Chiang after they were shot at near Jama Masjid in the national capital on Sunday, Beijing subtly did its bit to assert its stand on Taiwan—the western Pacific Ocean island that the victims belong to.

Though the two foreign nationals injured in the attack were almost immediately confirmed to be Taiwanese, Beijing swung into action and sent two of its diplomats from its embassy in New Delhi to the hospital to claim the wounded as the citizens of the People’s Republic of China. 

The Chinese Embassy in New Delhi also got in touch with the Ministry of Home Affairs and enquired about the incident and the injured, whom it referred to as “Chinese from Taiwan.” 

The Chinese diplomats had also done the same when a Taiwanese was hurt in the February 13 explosion at German Bakery in Pune.

The diplomats from the Chinese Consulate General in Mumbai had gone to the hospital to meet Huang Chih-ming, a tourist from Taiwan, and offered him help in an obvious attempt to claim him as a citizen of China. However, Huang, who had suffered injuries in his left leg and ruptured eardrums, had refused to accept any help from them, stating that he was a citizen of Taiwan.

China does not recognise Taiwan as a separate entity. The dispute has its origin in the Chinese Civil War. The Kuomintang Government of Republic of China had been ruling both mainland China and Taiwan till it had lost the civil war to the communists and relocated its Government to Taipei in Taiwan in December 1949. 

“We have an emergency response system in the embassy and that was activated on Sunday after we came to know about the incident near the Jama Masjid in which two Chinese from Taiwan were injured,” S Lin, an official of the press-section of the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi, told Deccan Herald on Monday. He said Yuncai Mei, counsellor in charge of the consular section, and another official from Chinese Embassy went to the hospital and enquired about the injured.

India has since long been pursuing a One-China policy and, like other countries, does not maintain diplomatic relation with Taiwan. However, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre (TECC) in New Delhi serves as a de facto mission of Taiwan in India. New Delhi, too, has an India-Taipei Association to serve as its mission in the capital of Taiwan.
Joy Yen, director of the TECC’s Information Centre, said the Chinese Embassy officials had turned up at the hospital on Sunday, but they had not been able to meet the injured Taiwanese.

“They (diplomats from Chinese Embassy) had come to the hospital and had politely chatted with our (TECC) officials, who were already there to help the two injured Taiwanese. The Chinese officials, however, were not allowed to meet the wounded as both were in the Intensive Care Unit then,” said Yen.
She said the Taiwanese Government had already thanked the Indian Government for all the assistance provided to the two injured men.
DH News Service