Beijing has slammed the United States space agency after it named Taiwan as a country at an event.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has recently reopened its “Send Your Name to Mars” portal, where users can sign up to send their names into space on a future Mars mission. In a previous signing event, its Perseverance rover landed on the planet in late February, carrying the names of nearly 11 million people.

In Beijing, Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian said at a press briefing that the island was an inalienable part of China. NASA’s behavior was in violation of the “one China” policy and the Three Joint Communiqués between China and the U.S., she said, accusing the space agency of hurting the feelings of Chinese people.

As a U.S. federal agency, NASA should right the wrong and respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, Zhu added.

Taiwan’s opposition leader Johnny Chiang said during an interview on Monday that his political party, Kuomintang, believed its cross-strait policy could not be established simply on the 1992 consensus, which the party defined as “one China with different interpretations.”

The future of the relationship with mainland China lay in acknowledging the existence of the Republic of China regime in Taiwan, and any major changes should receive the prior approval of the Taiwanese public, Chiang said.

Zhu said the core of the 1992 consensus between Beijing and Taipei was that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belonged to one China and would work together to seek unification. Attempts to stray from the consensus would not find approval with compatriots on either side, she said.

Asked about Chinese fighter jets flying into Taiwan’s southwestern air space 20 times last Friday, Zhu said it was “natural and right” for China’s army to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

She also responded to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s calls for mainland China to stop its human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Zhu said Beijing opposed the tactics of Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party to smear the mainland using “lies and false information fabricated by external anti-China forces.”

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