TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — China has called comparing Taiwan and Ukraine an act of “malicious hyping” and has dodged foreign press questions about its view on Russia declaring the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk.

During the Taiwan Affairs Office’s routine press conference on Wednesday (Feb. 23), Spokesperson Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光) responded to a reporter’s question pertaining to the Taiwan government’s statement that Taiwan empathizes with Ukraine. “Such ‘empathy’ comes from self-indulgence,” said Ma, who insisted that “Taiwan is an indivisible part of China” and thus “the Taiwan problem is part of China’s domestic politics.”

He claimed that the Taiwanese government has been “working with the American and Western discussions to maliciously hype up the so-called Chinese ‘military threat,’” which is a “scheme to ‘internationalize’ the Taiwan problem.”

Just the day before, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs answered several foreign reporters’ questions about China’s stance on Ukrainian separatism by repeating multiple times, “China’s stance on the Ukraine issue has been persistent.” However, foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin (汪文斌) did not explain what “China’s persistent stance” was.

“Any country’s reasonable security concerns should be respected… China will continue to contact various parties according to the issue’s own right and wrong,” Wang said in response to Agence France-Presse’s question on whether China agreed that Russia’s recognition of Ukraine’s “separatist regions” infringed upon Ukraine’s sovereignty.

When asked by Reuters if China acknowledged that “The Republic of Donetsk” and “The Republic of Luhansk” were new, independent countries, Wang answered, “I have introduced China’s stance on the Ukraine issue just now. The Ukraine issue comes with complex historical, geographical, and realistic factors, China’s stance on the Ukraine issue has been persistent, clear, and has not changed.”

He repeated the statement several times as the press conference progressed, including when The New York Times compared Russia’s insistence that Ukraine is not an independent country to China’s insistence that Taiwan is part of its territory. Wang emphasized that “Taiwan is an indivisible part of China.”

Bloomberg reporter Matthew Brooker tweeted about China’s “tricky dilemma,” writing that its avoidance of addressing the issue stems from the fact that “accepting Putin’s actions means endorsing separatism.”

“If Donetsk and Luhansk can be independent nations, then why not Taiwan?” Brooker wrote.