Now is the time for Tsai Ing-wen to leave her mark by driving a renewal of Taiwanese identity.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/01/08
By: By Milo Hsieh, 破土 New Bloom

Credit: Taiwan Presidential Office

A fierce confrontation took place between Chinese president Xi Jinping and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) over the new year. In response to statements by Xi on the 40th anniversary of the “Message to the Compatriots of Taiwan,” which could be described as a threat, Tsai’s quick and immediate response rallied the Taiwanese public and pressured the media and forced politicians across the political spectrum to affirm their stances in response.

This includes the Kuomintang (KMT). Historically, the KMT and its politicians have built a political platform promoting prosperity based on exchanges and closer ties between China and Taiwan. Its members have advocated the recognition of the so-called “1992 Consensus,” a claimed oral agreement made by unofficial diplomatic contact between the Straits Exchange Foundation of Taiwan and Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits that supposedly took place in 1992.

After Tsai’s statements, however, the KMT was forced to clarify its stance to reject Xi’s “One country, two systems” proposal, to be consistent with Tsai’s response in some respects. Two high-profile mayors, the mayors Taipei and Kaohsiung, two most populous cities whose combined population make up about a quarter of Taiwan’s population, have also reoriented their stance in order to accommodate the amount of support Tsai gathered with her response.    [FULL  STORY]