Tsai’s speech nonsense: mainland official

Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen’s speech was full of “separatist nonsense and antagonist thinking” against the Chinese mainland, Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council said Wednesday, in response to Tsai’s provocative speech on Double Tenth commemoration.

“Coupled with the evil intentions of some Western countries to contain the Chinese mainland,” the speech proved Tsai’s party is the destroyer of peace between the island of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office said on Wednesday.

In Tsai’s speech, which marked Taiwan’s 107th commemoration of Double Tenth Day, she said that Taiwan will adopt all measures to deal with infiltration, the Taiwan-based United Daily News reported online on Wednesday.

She even called the Chinese mainland the “source of conflicts.”

Any move that threatens cross-Straits relations is an insult to itself and cannot succeed, Ma added.

Tsai’s remarks came days after US Vice President Mike Pence’s speech accusing Beijing of orchestrating an aggressive military, economic and political campaign to expand its influence inside the US and across other regions in the world.

In her speech, Tsai deliberately catered to the “China threat” theory in a bid to seek support from Western countries.

Jin Yi, an expert at the Institute of Taiwan Studies of the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of Social Sciences(CASS), told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Tsai’s fawning partially resulted from international pressure, especially the loss of several diplomatic allies this year, Zhang Hua, assistant research fellow at the Institute of Taiwan Studies of CASS, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Tsai tried to exploit the problems between Chinese mainland and the US to seek “Taiwan independence,” Zhang said. That was a misjudgment, he said. “The US will never run the risk of confronting the Chinese mainland to back Taiwan, and Taiwan is just a card of the US which could easily be abandoned,” Zhang said.

Tsai insisted she would not confront the issue or jeopardize cross-Straits relations, nor would she sacrifice Taiwan’s “sovereignty.”

Zhang said that as Taiwan has dragged the US into cross-Straits relations, the mainland will respond by pressuring Taiwan with more frequent military actions around the island.

“Taiwan will be the ultimate victim which suffers most in this situation,” Zhang told the Global Times.