Vice President William Lai’s (賴清德) lightning visit to Japan to offer his condolences following the assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe had the Japanese media lauding the gesture by the person they called “Taiwan’s pro-Japan second-in-command.”
Given the special circumstances of the visit, Lai was accorded far better treatment than was given to former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), who made a stopover in Japan on his way to the US in 1985.
The administration of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is clearly unafraid of angering Beijing; that it extended a welcoming hand to Taiwan’s vice president speaks volumes.
Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) commands a majority in parliament and would not face another election for three years. With Abe’s passing, Kishida no longer has a powerful challenger to his authority.
Naturally, stimulating the economy would be a priority, and in this he cannot afford to disregard the Chinese market. Sept. 29 will mark the 50th anniversary of the normalization of Japan’s diplomatic relations with China, which would be a good opportunity for the two countries to improve relations.
UNFAVORABLE VIEW
That said, according to a poll released this month, 87 percent of Japanese view China unfavorably, and the LDP’s resounding victory on July 10 shows that Japanese want the Kishida administration to continue Abe’s policy of being pro-US and friendly toward Taiwan, while opposing China.
Under the watchful eye of a Japanese public deeply suspicious of China and friendly toward Taiwan, Kishida is going to have play a balancing act between rapprochement with Beijing and nurturing friendly relations with Taipei.
By allowing Lai’s visit he assuaged the concerns of conservatives, but also left a way open to break the ice with Beijing, with less background noise complicating matters.
The nature of Lai’s visit makes it difficult for Beijing to protest in any reasonable way, as offering condolences in such circumstances is only humane. In addition, China has found itself isolated, and this opportunity to explore ways to improve relations with Japan in the immediate “post-Abe” era should not be passed up for a trivial matter such as bemoaning Lai’s visit.
However, with the passing of Lee and Abe, people have lost two major advocates of maintaining friendly Taiwan-Japan relations.
Kishida might well want to step out of Abe’s shadow. Personnel choices, from appointing the pro-China Yoshimasa Hayashi, regarded as a political rival of Abe, as his minister of foreign affairs, to the sudden departure of former administrative vice defense minister Kazuhisa Shimada, a figure close to Abe, have signaled that change is in the air.
Since he served as Tainan mayor, Lai has been the most prolific Taiwanese politician in terms of cultivating ties with Japan, sowing seeds of friendship wherever he went. He knows the country well, and is well-known among Japanese politicians.
For the Kishida administration to welcome Lai and allow him to attend Abe’s funeral in the capacity of a close friend is a positive sign for President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her vice president.
It sends a clear signal that, even if Kishida is willing to improve ties with China, he also intends to continue Abe’s approach of being pro-US and friendly toward Taiwan.
Wang Hui-sheng is chief director of the Kisei Ladies’ and Children’s Hospital in Japan.
Translated by Paul Cooper
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Many local news media last week reported that COVID-19 is back, citing doctors’ observations and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics. The CDC said that cases would peak this month and urged people to take preventive measures. Although COVID-19 has never been eliminated, it has become more manageable, and restrictions were dropped, enabling people to return to their normal way of life due to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. In Taiwan, mandatory reporting of confirmed cases and home isolation ended in March last year, while the mask mandate at hospitals and healthcare facilities stopped in May. However, the CDC last week said the number