Borrowing Arrows from the CCP: Is Tsai Ing-wen Manipulating the Issue of Unification vs. Independence for Electioneering Purposes?

 Borrowing Arrows from the CCP: Is Tsai Ing-wen Manipulating the Issue of Unification vs. Independence for Electioneering Purposes?

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 8, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

President Tsai Ing-wen used her strong response to Xi Jinping's talk delivered during the commemoration of the "Letter to Taiwan Compatriots" to again don her armor for battle, saying in a high-decibel that she was fulfilling her duties as President, and sternly telling the four pro-independence elders who in a joint open letter asked her to forego her re-election bid to turn their guns to the other side at this crucial moment. Tsai Ing-wen borrowed Xi Jinping's arrows to lambast the independence faction and the KMT, standing on the front lines as leader countering the CCP, she used a high-pitched political posture to proclaim that she herself had a fervent determination to never forsake her bid for re-election.

The Tsai government equates the 1992 Consensus with the one country, two systems; this kind of provocative and confrontational below-the-belt approach is extremely unbecoming of a president. Just imagine, did she mean that advocating one China, different interpretations, and promoting peaceful cross-Strait development, while seeking commonalities and shelving divergences should all be labeled by the government as supporting the CCP’s "one country, two systems." If Tsai Ing-wen is truly a disciple of democracy, then she should believe that the people may, through interchanges and dialogues of various forms, rationally choose the nation’s future direction, and not fabricate disinformation inciting people to suppress others who have different opinions. Conversely, the Tsai government repeatedly used the pretext of "anti-united front tactics" to block cross-Strait exchanges, inversely exposing its maladministration in governance, rather employing closed-door policies and internal exhaustion than erecting cross-Strait peace.

To borrow Ko Wen-je's comments regarding the Xi Jinping-Tsai Ing-wen incident: "No matter what is being said, after having spoken, we still have to come back and solve the problems; Taiwan does not need people to discover problems, but needs people to solve problems." Tsai Ing-wen’s straw boats borrowed arrows from Xi Jinping; whether it can truly allow her to defeat the foe to win re-election is something that still depends on whose countermeasures could better win the trust of the people. If all the way inciting anti-China sentiments, totally disregarding people's livelihoods, it could engulf herself in flames.

[Editor’s note: “Borrowing arrows” comes from “borrowing arrows with straw boats,” a famed and fascinating epic during the Period of the Three Kingdoms (A.D.220-280). Zhuge Liang, a great statesman and strategist of the State of Shu (now in Sichuan Province), an ally of the State of Wu, was asked to make 100,000 arrows in three days by Wu to be used against their common enemy the State of Wei just to test his mettle. Surprisingly, Zhu agreed without hesitation, asking only that the State of Wu provide a fleet of boats loaded with straw men. Then, in a foggy night under the cover of darkness, Zhuge Liang ordered the fleet to sail towards the enemy’s camp along the Yangtze River. Taken by surprise, the Wei generals decided not to fight a naval battle, but to shoot arrows like rain falling from the sky at the seemingly invading fleet. When the fleet of boats returned to their own camp, the straw men on the boats got more arrows than Zhuge Liang pledged!]

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