On Saturday, Vice President and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman William Lai (賴清德) left to visit to Taiwan’s diplomatic ally Paraguay, and stopped over in New York on the way. He plans to stop over in San Francisco on his return.
In response, China’s Maritime Safety Administration on Friday announced that it would conduct military exercises in the East China Sea from Saturday to yesterday, in an attempt to threaten Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Vice Premier Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) has denounced Beijing’s deliberate attempts to lure Paraguayan and other foreign media into running negative reports about Lai and Taiwan’s diplomatic affairs, saying such actions are shameful.
It is the basic right of a democratic country such as Taiwan to go out and make exchanges with other countries. Lai’s visit to Paraguay is a symbol of the growing friendship between the two countries, and stopping over in the US has been a customary practice for many years. China’s large military drills at this time are deeply problematic.
China has been making irrational moves just to “remove the DPP from office” by endorsing rival parties such as the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), or even independent presidential hopeful Terry Gou (郭台銘).
However, such maneuvers would only help the DPP and Lai, who is the party’s presidential candidate, and will yield the opposite result in the end.
The KMT, the TPP and Gou are more friendly to China, and they are also more obedient. If any of them wins next year’s presidential election, it might be amenable to Beijing, allowing its ambition to annex Taiwan to grow rampantly, and shortening the time frame for this to occur.
On the other hand, the DPP and Lai are determined to defend Taiwan’s independent sovereignty and the fruits of freedom and democracy, and they have been standing up to China’s harassment and unreasonable oppression to protect Taiwan’s dignity, so the island can continue to enjoy its sovereignty, democracy and freedom.
As they gain greater support in the presidential campaign, Beijing’s political trick will never work.
Chi An-hsiu
Taipei
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