Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday rejected the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call for unification under a “one country, two systems” approach.

Tsai said her island of 23 million people would never accept the approach proposed by Beijing.One country, two systems refers to a framework similar to Hong Kong in which the territory became part of China but retained a degree of autonomy.

Taiwan and China split in a civil war that brought the Communist Party to power in China in 1949.The rival nationalists set up their own government on Taiwan,an island 160km off the Chinese mainland.