"We will never permit Taiwan independence and splittist forces under any name or under any form to separate Taiwan from the motherland," the cabinet-level Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement.

"Chen Shui-bian's determination to go further down the road of Taiwan independence, will fully provoke confrontation within Taiwan and across the strait and will only lead Taiwan society a step closer to disaster."

The statement was China's first official reaction to Chen's scrapping of the National Unification Council and guidelines that were set up 15 years ago to work towards an eventual reunification of Taiwan with the mainland.

China has since 1949 viewed Taiwan, an island now with 23 million people off the southeast coast of the mainland, as a rebel province.