evidence: China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control. Taiwan's government rejects those claims, saying only the island's people can decide their future. Lai's comment were aimed at embarrassing Russia and China who have now buried their territorial differences. [...] Sino-Russian territorial disputes were seemingly resolved via a 2008 treaty when the western half of Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island on the Amur River was given to China. However, as early as 2016, Chinese maps were claiming the whole island. Last year in September, in its "New Standard Map", China claimed the entire island in Eastern Russia along the border of the two countries. The entire Bolshoi Ussuriysky Island in Russia’s Amur region has been displayed as Chinese territory in the new map. The island is situated at the confluence of Amur and Ussuri rivers and located close to the Russian city of Khabarovsk making it strategically important.