Robert Tsao (曹興誠), the founder and former chairman of United Microelectronics Corp, has criticized the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for “playing fast and loose” with the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that party officials are “doing their best to bring chaos to Taiwan. Their behavior is utterly abhorrent; they have reduced themselves to being running dogs for the Chinese Communist Party [CCP].”
Pan-blue camp figures attacked Tsao, saying his intervention was baseless and calling him a “Singaporean” who should mind his own business.
Tsao, who is Taiwanese, in 2011 swapped his Republic of China citizenship to become Singaporean. His intervention clearly struck a raw nerve.
The pan-blue camp is incapable of introspection. It has forgotten its anti-communist roots and reduced itself to functioning as Beijing’s fifth column in Taiwan. Had former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) still been around, that would have earned them a date with the execution squad.
The Taiwanese-centered faction of society is still seething with anger at the massacres and brutality carried out by the party during the Chiang era. However, the pan-blue camp continues to be superficially deferential to Chiang, but in all its actions it is betraying his legacy. It is also opposed to a Taiwanese identity, democracy and liberty.
Chiang’s realization of the extent to which the CCP had infiltrated Taiwan and its orchestrated campaign of destabilization acted as the touchpaper for his White Terror. CCP spies were deeply embedded within the government and organizations at every level. They spread rumors, disinformation and sought to vilify the government to destabilize society. Sowing chaos has always been the objective of the CCP and its fellow travelers.
The administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has worked hard to obtain COVID-19 vaccines from international manufacturers, develop domestic vaccines and keep the virus in check until Taiwan has accumulated a sufficient supply of doses.
Tsai and her pro-Taiwan team have called for unity to defeat the virus. In contrast, the KMT and pro-Beijing elements have seized on the COVID-19 pandemic to further their objectives, and have called on the public to collectively resist the government.
Defeating the virus requires that group gatherings be stopped, while a campaign of resistance calls for mobilization and mass gatherings. The difference between the two approaches could not be more clear: quietly uniting to defeat the virus versus taking to the streets to carry out silly stunts.
Domestic vaccines are still in development, and other safe jabs are in short supply. The pan-blue camp has leaped at the opportunity to adopt an anti-Japanese, anti-US stance; complained that there are no, or not enough, vaccines; and ignored national security concerns and legal responsibilities by advocating the importation of Chinese-produced vaccines — all with the goal of paving the way for “one China.”
Thankfully, the international community respects Taiwanese lives, despite China’s barbaric suppression of Taiwan. If the CCP running dogs in Taiwan possess an ounce of intelligence, they would try to use their influence to persuade Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to stop interfering in the Taiwan’s efforts to procure high-quality vaccines, but instead they persist in throwing up hurdles and agitating for the government to purchase unsafe, ineffective “one China” vaccines.
Chinese vaccines are useless in defeating the virus.
Chinese social media users have for months been calling on their leaders to be the first to take Chinese-produced vaccines. It seems that on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, nobody wants to be the CCP’s lab rat.
James Wang is a senior journalist.
Translated by Edward Jones
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