During a speech at the Ketagalan Forum’s 2021 Asia-Pacific Security Dialogue on Tuesday last week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) referred to “neighboring countries,” which some interpreted to include China. Taiwan’s pan-blue camp was incandescent with rage and claimed that Tsai’s choice of words would lead to “cross-strait conflict.”
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was predictably hopping mad. The party’s pro-Beijing credentials were on full display as it demanded the president take into account Beijing’s reaction before opening her mouth. The KMT’s dogged cleaving to the mystical “one China” dogma of the failed “1992 consensus” shows that its members really do view Taiwan’s neighbor as the “motherland.”
The pan-blue camp’s greater China ideological mindset runs completely contrary to mainstream opinion in Taiwan and the international community, which seeks to maintain some sort of a “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait.
Is it any wonder that a recent opinion poll showed that Taiwanese voters display more antipathy toward the KMT than any other political party? Furthermore, among all age groups, the level of loathing for the KMT is at stratospheric levels for the “naturally independent” new generation of young Taiwanese.
During the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, a number of foreign media organizations, including in the US, Europe and Japan, called Taiwan’s national team by its proper name: “Taiwan.”
On Wednesday last week, the European Parliament passed the EU-Taiwan Political Relations and Cooperation report and related proposals by a landslide 60-4 vote, with six members abstaining. The proposals urge the EU to bolster political ties with Taiwan and rename its European Economic and Trade Office the “EU Office in Taiwan.”
Democratic nations around the world are acknowledging the political reality that Taiwan and China are mutually exclusive sovereign entities, yet the KMT still insists on singing from Beijing’s hymn sheet by criticizing Tsai’s use of the word “neighbors.” Meanwhile, the KMT’s tone-deaf Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) loudly proclaims: “I am Chinese.”
The KMT is a party of back-stabbing freeloaders, full of surrender monkeys prepared to sell out Taiwan at the drop of a hat. It is maddening that the treacherous KMT continues to exist, for China is not just a neighbor: It is Taiwan’s sworn enemy.
Lai Yen-cheng is a doctoral candidate at National Yangming Chiao Tung University.
Translated by Edward Jones
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