President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan has been on a speaking tour that he says is aimed at uniting the island against threats from China. But critics say the campaign risks backfiring, deepening political divisions at home while provoking an angry response from Beijing.
Mr. Lai is battling on two fronts: China, which claims Taiwan as its territory and threatens to take it by force, and Taiwan’s opposition parties, which control the legislature and have tried to curb his administration’s policies and powers.
The president’s response has been what he calls “Ten Speeches on National Unity,” but the campaign and the heated responses that it has generated are exposing the very divisions that Mr. Lai says he wants to heal. The contention reflects rifts over Taiwan’s identity, its fraught relationship with China, and how to keep the island secure.
In the three speeches that Mr. Lai has made so far, he has argued that Taiwan’s history, culture and democratic politics are incompatible with Communist-ruled China.
China threatens to “blur the national identity of our people,” Mr. Lai said in his latest speech on Sunday. “China exploits Taiwan’s good will and opportunities for exchanges to carry out united front work and infiltration,” he said, using terms that refer to China’s efforts to advance Beijing’s agenda in the world.
In his first speech, Mr. Lai emphasized Taiwan’s history as a Pacific Ocean island, not as a sometime outpost of imperial China. The People’s Republic of China that Mao Zedong founded in 1949 had never occupied Taiwan, he said. With its own government, military and foreign policy, he added, “of course, Taiwan is a country.”
Mr. Lai’s declarations have set off an escalating war of words with Beijing. Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for the Chinese government office that deals with Taiwan, said on Monday that Mr. Lai had “completely abandoned his heritage and was betraying the nation.” The Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party newspaper, said that Mr. Lai was treating the island’s 23 million people as “cannon fodder for Taiwan independence.”
And while Mr. Lai has been making his speeches, China has been hosting Taiwan’s former president, Ma Ying-jeou of the main opposition Nationalist Party, who supports an eventual peaceful merger between China and Taiwan. Last week, Chinese officials took Mr. Ma to Dunhuang, an ancient Buddhist site in northwest China, a gesture designed to make the point that Taiwan is a part of China’s heritage.
China has furiously denounced Mr. Lai, who has been in power since May last year, accusing him of pursuing outright independence for Taiwan — a red line for Chinese leaders. The stakes are high: Beijing, which already conducts regular air and naval operations near Taiwan, may use Mr. Lai’s speeches to justify increasing its military pressure on Taiwan.
The president’s critics in Taiwan are also harsh, accusing him of stoking divisions and jeopardizing the fragile status quo with China.
“He’s not only failing to unite Taiwan’s various ethnic groupings; on the contrary, I think he’s actually increasing and heightening divisiveness and polarization,” Weng Hsiao-ling, a law professor who is also an opposition lawmaker, said in an interview.
The bitter rhetoric reflects the deadlock between Mr. Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party and the Nationalist Party, which favors building ties with Beijing. A smaller party, the Taiwan People’s Party, is also hostile to Mr. Lai, and together the two opposition parties control the majority in the 113-member legislature. They have repeatedly blocked Mr. Lai’s proposals, including the budget.
In response, Mr. Lai’s party has endorsed a recall campaign against Nationalist members in Taiwan’s legislature.
Political experts say Mr. Lai is hoping to energize his supporters to win back control of the legislature after recall votes scheduled for late July. Up to two dozen Nationalist Party lawmakers may lose their seats if the recall votes gather enough support, and special elections for fresh candidates would follow.
“He is trying to fire his base of support as much as possible in order to ensure the recalls are successful,” said Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Taiwan University in Taipei. He added that for now “Lai’s only weapon is his microphone. He is unable to pass policy, and the policy changes he can make are all very limited. Truly, the only meaningful agency he has as president is when he is making a speech.”
The divisions reflect longstanding disagreements about Taiwan’s history and identity.
Mr. Lai and his supporters in the “green” camp emphasize that Taiwan is separate from China, historically and politically. Mr. Lai has also accused Taiwan’s opposition of eroding Taiwan’s security and democracy. The Nationalists and their supporters in the “blue” camp argue that stronger links with China can be help maintain peace.
The rival views of Taiwan’s status are difficult to reconcile, said Wang Horng-luen, a scholar at Academia Sinica, a Taiwanese research institute.
“Because of Taiwan’s special historical context and international setting, the narratives about Taiwan’s sovereignty are very hard to describe clearly,” he said. “No matter whether it’s the Taiwan-centered one, or the China-centered one, they both exclude the other group.”
Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for The Times, reports on China and Taiwan from Taipei, focused on politics, social change and security and military issues.
Amy Chang Chien is a reporter and researcher for The Times in Taipei, covering Taiwan and China.
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