President William Lai (賴清德) sat down for an interview with Time magazine on May 30. It was published on Wednesday.
Lai’s responses were a study in the carefully configured presentation of himself as a rational, non-partisan and measured elected head of an already sovereign state, and of Taiwan as a reliable member of the international community.
He consistently steered the conversation away from a focus on cross-strait relations, situating the context of Taiwan’s relations with China as being an engagement with just another country.
Although there was recognition that China presents a unique problem to Taiwan, there was little mention of war, even versing China’s threat in terms of lawfare, angling away from the threat of military invasion. Lai’s answers were carefully considered. When one reads between the lines, the overarching theme was evident: The global conversation around Taiwan must move beyond an obsession of the country in terms of its relationship to China.
Of the 16 questions in the main interview that made it into the published text, 12 directly referred to China, and one was a question about the actions of opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators which provided context for follow-up questions referring to visits by KMT figures to Beijing.
Still, Lai remained insistent on speaking of Taiwan within the wider global context.
Asked about reports of a discussion about Taiwan by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), Lai urged Xi to understand that “conflict in the Taiwan Strait and disruptions to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region” would not be accepted by the international community.
On China’s economic problems, he chose not to mention China’s economic coercion against Taiwan, saying instead that economic relations between the two countries are the result of divisions of labor within global supply chains. He then turned the discussion to a comparison of the problems of the authoritarian model of state control over the economy, and blaming the drying up of foreign direct investment into China on Beijing’s military expansionism, which has impacted regional peace and stability.
On the KMT legislators’ visit to China, Lai said that they should recognize and respond to China’s core objectives of annexing Taiwan, which was the only time he mentioned those objectives.
The idea of “recognition” emerged as a sub-theme. The interviewer broached this initially with reference to the shifting of diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing by Nauru only 48 hours after Lai’s election victory. Lai remained magnanimous, refusing to blame Nauru, but more importantly subtly leveraged the meaning of “recognition,” implying that China’s diplomatic theft would have no bearing on “Taiwan’s status as a beacon of freedom and a bastion of democracy in the world.” This is the point: While Taiwan’s number of diplomatic allies is falling, Taiwan’s profile, recognition and acceptance in the international community as a whole are increasing.
Lai used the interview to reiterate significant points from his inaugural address, but in a forum that would likely reach an audience outside of Taiwan: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) must recognize that the Republic of China (ROC) exists, and it should be sincere in building exchanges with the democratically elected government of Taiwan; that the ROC and PRC are not subordinate to each other; and that according to international law, irrespective of official recognition by individual states, Taiwan is already a sovereign and independent country.
His measured responses were a careful iteration of the approach Lai intends to maintain in office.
His calm, reasonable delivery will no doubt be in stark contrast to Beijing’s inevitable histrionic response.
Deterrence is fading; war is looming on the Taiwan Strait and for other targets of the China-enabled dictatorship alliance, and after three years the cure is just dawning on the Biden Administration. Now mind you, for a May 28, 2024 interview with Time magazine, President Joe Biden made his 5th public commitment that the United States would defend Taiwan. Less than three weeks later the United States Navy, along with ships from navies of Japan, Canada, the Netherlands, and France, were conducting the Valiant Shield joint force exercise in the Philippine Sea south of Taiwan and in the South China Sea to
The official media of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reacted to the May 20 inauguration speech of President William Lai (賴清德) by asserting: “Lai’s words reveal his true intention of sacrificing peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait for his own desire for power.” This baseless accusation by Beijing that Lai is manipulating Taiwanese to resist unification with China for his personal gain, is part of a broader CCP information warfare campaign that has intensified since Lai’s election. This campaign, orchestrated by the United Front Work Department, the CCP’s agency for coordinating influence operations and propaganda, aims to demoralize Taiwanese,
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
Minister of Health and Welfare Chiu Tai-yuan (邱泰源) on Friday said the ministry supports keeping priority seats on public transportation, but is considering expanding the eligibility criteria and renaming the seats. Chiu’s remarks came after local news media over the past few weeks reported incidents involving priority seats, once again sparking heated discussion about whether the seats should be abolished or regulations regarding them should be revised. On June 11, an older woman asked a young woman on a Taipei MRT train to yield her priority seat. The young woman refused, saying that she needed the seat after working a 12-hour shift.