Taiwan’s presidential election in January next year is a choice between “democracy or autocracy,” Vice President William Lai (賴清德) said in an interview aired the same weekend China launched military drills around the country.
The drills came after Lai made two stopovers in the US — in New York en route to Paraguay and in San Francisco when returning to Taipei — that enraged Beijing.
Lai said in an interview with Taiwanese TV station Era News, done while he was in the US, that Taiwan cannot accept the “one China” principle.
Photo: Taipei Times file
“If we accept the ‘one China’ principle, we might get some short-term ease, but when one day China changes its face, we don’t have our sovereignty and the international community can’t help us,” Lai said in the interview that aired late on Saturday.
“It would become a civil war and the international community could not help us, just like it’s very hard for the international community to help Hong Kong and Macau,” he said. “Sovereignty matters the most.”
Lai, the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, added that the election is “not a choice between peace and war.”
“We can’t order off a menu, choosing peace and then there’s peace, choosing war and then there’s war. That’s not the case,” he said.
“Instead we have the right to choose whether we want democracy or autocracy. This is the real choice we have to make in this election,” he said.
Although Lai has been far more outspoken about independence than President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), he told Bloomberg Businessweek in a recent interview that he had no plans to pursue formal independence as Taiwan is a “sovereign, independent country.”
“Taiwan is already a sovereign, independent country called the Republic of China,” he said.
Lai reiterated this position in the Era News interview.
“My position is that Taiwan is not a part of the People’s Republic of China,” he said. “We are willing to link up with the international community and talk to [China] under the guarantee of security.”
Asked how would he call for dialogue with Beijing, Lai said he had proposed the “four-pillar plan for peace.”
Taiwan has to strengthen its national defense capabilities, ensure economic security and bolster ties with other democracies, he said.
Lai would be happy to engage in dialogue and seek cooperation with Beijing based on reciprocity and dignity to improve the well-being of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, he added.
Additional reporting by Chen Cheng-yu
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