About 30 protesters armed with signs and slogans were cordoned off by plainclothes police outside the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday where a meeting between cross-strait negotiators was being held.

The gathering, led by the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan, was part of ongoing protests the group has planned against all types of cross-strait meetings, with the protest’s leaders saying interactions have eroded Taiwanese sovereignty.

“Taiwan and China, each side is a different country,” chanted members of the group, most of whom were middle-aged or elderly, before several of them ripped up paper emblems of the Republic of China and People’s Republic of China combined on one flag.