Nick Frisch
On May 20, in a ceremony in Taipei, Lai Ching-te is scheduled to be inaugurated as the next leader of Taiwan. Currently vice president, Lai is taking over from President Tsai Ing-wen at a delicate moment in Taiwan’s relations with Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regards the self-ruling island of 23 million people as a renegade province to be unified with the mainland by force, if necessary. And although Taiwan has managed to maintain significant trade and interpersonal ties to mainland China while postponing discussions over its sovereignty, this ambiguous status quo has recently frayed amid political headwinds from both Beijing and Taipei. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has explicitly made taking Taiwan part of his plans to “rejuvenate” China. But Taiwan’s people are less interested than ever in unifying with the mainland.
When Lai, a known China skeptic, triumphed in January’s election, international headlines suggested that Taiwan’s voters had worsened this breach by keeping the presidency in the hands of the Democratic Progressive Party, to which Tsai and Lai both belong. The DPP has historically advocated that Taiwan alter its constitution to formally declare independence, although the party’s political candidates today say they have no plans to do so. Lai himself was once a vocal independence activist. As a result, CCP leaders in Beijing despise the DPP and Lai as irreconcilable separatists.
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