China bristles at Macron linking Ukraine defense to Taiwan threats

China on Saturday criticized as a "double standard" attempts to link the defense of Ukraine with the need to protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion - a thinly veiled reference to a speech by French President Emmanuel Macron in Singapore on Friday night. As part of a broader address on the risks of division between China and the United States, Macron told the Shangri-La Dialogue defense meeting that if Russia was allowed to take any part of Ukraine without constraint then "what could happen in Taiwan? China views democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and has stepped up military and political pressure to assert those claims, including increasing the intensity of war games, saying the island is one of its provinces with no right to be called a state.