The Taiwanese president takes the risk of a firm speech against China

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, during National Day, in Taipei, October 10, 2024. ANN WANG/REUTERS In some places in the world, it only takes a few words to go from peace to war. This is the case in the Taiwan Strait, where the tone adopted by the new president of the island towards China is the subject of the greatest attention. Lai Ching-te, elected in January and took office in May, while weighing his words, considers that it is necessary to say things as they are, at the risk of contributing to increasing tension with Beijing. “The Republic of China which took root in Taiwan (…) and the People’s Republic of China are in no way subordinate to each other,” declared the Taiwanese president for his first National Day speech, Thursday October 10 , promising to maintain the status quo but also to resist “annexation or violations of our sovereignty”. “China has no right to represent Taiwan,” he said. The date marks the start of the rebellion that in 1911 brought an end to Imperial China, symbolizing the historical complexity that characterizes the question of the island of Taiwan. The former master of Republican China, Chiang Kai-shek, defeated on the continent by Mao Zedong’s communist soldiers, retreated there in 1949, giving rise to a sort of continuity of his regime on the island and claiming to return one day, which is illustrated by the official name “Republic of China” which, today, persists without corresponding to the island’s geographical reality. The generalissimo’s formation, the Nationalist Party or Kouomintang (KMT), reigned by terror on the island for four decades before accepting the democratic game. Beijing and Taipei under a KMT government agreed, at the beginning of the 1990s, on a sort of unspoken statement according to which there would be only one China, each of which was then free to make its own interpretation on its own. A formula which, for the Chinese Communist Party, has the merit of underlining its vision according to which the island is Chinese and therefore has the vocation to one day be attached to it politically. A political identity of its own But, for the party in power for eight years, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), resulting from the fight for democracy and freedoms which took root in Taiwan, where over the decades an identity has been forged own policy, this so-called one-China principle is nonsense, a denial of reality. President from 2016 to 2024, Tsai Ing-wen sought to escape from this discourse, regularly affirming the reality of the sovereignty of the island, which has its political system, its currency, its army, its passports and all the attributes of a State if not international recognition. You have 52.35% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.



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