With the Return Home of Taiwan Residents Stranded in Wuhan, the Tsai Gov’t May Also Be Cleared of the Stigma of Cold Indifference

With the Return Home of Taiwan Residents Stranded in Wuhan, the Tsai Gov’t May Also Be Cleared of the Stigma of Cold Indifference

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

March 11, 2020

 Translation of an Excerpt

Yesterday, two chartered flights ferried home a total of 470 people. Worthy of mention is that, in pushing for cross-Strait cooperation for the chartered flights this time, our government dispatched a China Airlines flight and the other side sent a China Eastern Airlines flight; cross-Strait medical and nursing staff jointly carried out pre-boarding quarantine work, escorting to Taiwan its people who had longed to be back home.

Not until the epidemic storm in Wuhan was nearing to seize did the Tsai government begin to ferry home Taiwan residents stranded there; of course, it was a virtuous act but with imperfections. Up to this point, it also explains that the government earlier in using "priority for the underprivileged", "insufficient capacity for epidemic prevention" and other grounds in order to delay the ferrying, were completely false political pretexts and "humanitarian" premises far less than "anti-China" thinking.

In any case, the two sides of the Strait eventually could have, at a crucial moment, reached an agreement to ferry Taiwan residents home from Wuhan is still worthy of consoling. Through the impact of this epidemic, the schism of cross-Strait grudges will inevitably become deeper; nevertheless, as long as both sides can return to humanitarian and rational tracks, even more thorny problems could still be overcome. After all, henceforth, issues such as the breaking of the cross-Strait industrial chains and entry and exit controls across the Strait still need the joint resolution of both sides.

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