When Tsai Ing-wen's Little Abacus Meets Xi Jinping’s Big Computer

  When Tsai Ing-wen's Little Abacus Meets Xi Jinping’s Big Computer

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 9, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

At a year-end tea with the media, Tsai Ing-wen said she believed Xi Jinping was a "rational" decision-maker and would not use force against Taiwan. Who knew a week later Mainland China unilaterally declared that it would open the northbound M503 aviation route west of the Taiwan Strait centerline; the National Security Council believed that the Mainland unilaterally changed the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and notified the United States, seeking support. But using the international legal civil aviation route to massively compress Taiwan's defense space was, however, precisely the Mainland’s apparent rational calculation.

For Beijing, Taiwan’s refusal to return to the track of "one China" or "the 1992 Consensus" means "the great renaissance of the Chinese nation" will not be realized. For this reason, using systemic moves to compress Taiwan's living and security space, forming a "new normal" in the Taiwan Strait, and creating a "new cross-Strait status quo" seem to be within the scope of Xi Jinping’s rational calculation.

In a changing world, Tsai Ing-wen thought that she could "remain static to counter the myriad changes around her," believing that by not stepping on the red line, she could stabilize the situation, which was nothing but wishful thinking. Tsai Ing-wen wants to use time in exchange for space, but time is not on her side, and Xi Jinping seems more inclined to test her mettle on strategic fortitude and endurance. The CCP need not resort to force; it only needs to compress Taiwan's economic, military and international space to achieve the goal of "weakening Taiwan." This is a pragmatic assessment based on the international environment and the cross-Strait situation.

The DPP took power again along with the shock of the younger generation, but since coming to office, the Tsai government has engaged in large-scale political struggles, oblivious to the economy and people's livelihood, while abandoning and cutting off cross-Strait linkages; the end result, however, could drive a generation of young people to move westward, seeking a future on the Mainland. When young people vote with their feet one after another, could Tsai Ing-wen be called a rational decision-maker? When the little abacus of her "New Southward Policy" encounters Xi Jinping’s military planes and civil aviation aircraft, accelerating the circling of Taiwan, what are her chances of winning?

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