Taiwan and China have been at loggerheads for a long time with the Chinese Government (PRC) vying to unify Taiwan with the Mainland. The US has been vocal about its unconditional support for Taiwan’s independence, however, Beijing continues to grow apprehensive of US’ sway in the ‘renegade province’.
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Chinese state mouthpiece, Global Times (GT), interviewed Wang Zaixi, former deputy director of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits who stated that Taiwan is now under Washington’s deep control.
He further criticised US President Donald Trump for supplying weapons and equipment worth $13.8 billion to Taiwan, creating conditions for the Democratic Progressive Party(DPP) authority to “reject unification by force.”
DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen won the 2020 Presidential election for the second time in a row. DPP maintains that it cannot accept becoming part of China under “one country, two systems”.
“Two things did objectively help Tsai win the election even though she achieved nothing over the past four years: one was the riots in Hong Kong, the other was the deteriorating China-US relationship,” said Zaixi.
“Taiwan’s separatist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority smeared the “one country, two systems”, under those circumstances, which misled and deceived many voters especially the young people,” he added.
China and Taiwan have been in a position of stalemate. The troops from both sides have been demonstrating their muscle power in the South China Sea. With rising anti-Beijing sentiment, Taiwan and Hong Kong seem to be coming together to fight the common adversary – Beijing.
China has previously accused supporters of Taiwan independence of colluding with the protestors in Hong Kong. The official data shows that the number of Hong Kong immigrants to Taiwan surged 150 percent to 2,383 in the first four months of 2020 from the same period last year.
Zaixi accused Tsai of supporting the “rioters” in Hong Kong during the protests that broke out against the new security law imposed by China. He said that Tsai, with the help of “external forces including the US and the UK” slandered the efforts of Hong Kong police in stopping the riots, calling it a ‘crackdown on democracy and freedom’.
“As most participants of the riots were local young students, Taiwan media focused mainly on the scenes of Hong Kong police arresting these students, which frightened some young people on the island,” he explained.
“The Tsai authority knows that Taiwan cannot compete with the mainland on its own, and therefore turns to Washington and is willing to be used,” he stated. “Washington’s Taipei-related acts, such as the “Taiwan Travel Act,” “Asia Reassurance Initiative Act,” and the “Taipei Act” which he US Congress passed in recent years, as well as the “National Defense Authorization Act” that Trump signed, have made relations between Washington and Taipei a semi-official one,” he added.
He concluded by saying that the dominance of DPP will also lead to its downfall. He further said that the US supported the removal of Han Kuo-Yu, Taiwan’s opposition candidate who was voted out from the position of Mayor of the city of Kaohsiung so that US warships can dock at Kaohsiung Port.
