SOFT POWER:The president said her commitment to peace remains unchanged and any interactions with China would be based in a dialogue, not confrontation

Taipei Times
Date: Oct 06, 2016
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has pledged that her administration would neither succumb to Chinese pressure nor lower its level of goodwill toward Beijing, urging Taiwan’s increasingly hostile neighbor to return to the calm and rationality it demonstrated for a short period after her inauguration.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in Taipei on Tuesday, Tsai said her May 20 inaugural address — which China has described as an “incomplete test” — was an embodiment of her “maximum benevolence and flexibility.”

“Following May 20, we saw Beijing demonstrate a certain level of composure and rationality… For a period of time we also witnessed some acts of kindness from China,” Tsai said.

However, Tsai said that Taiwan’s exclusion from this year’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Assembly in Canada and its treatment of Taiwanese with different political stances as a sign that Beijing has decided to return to its tactics of suppression and division.     [FULL  STORY]