President Tsai, Visa-Free Treatment Shouldn’t Be Used So Cavalierly

  President Tsai, Visa-Free Treatment Shouldn’t Be Used So Cavalierly

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

July 31, 2017

 Translation of an Excerpt

On the occasion of Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes’ visit to Taiwan, the Tsai Ying-wen government announced the granting of visa-free treatment to eleven diplomatic partners in Latin American and the Caribbean. On the surface, this move seems to be filled with magnanimity and generosity, but, on the other hand, it revealed the hollow and superficial mentality of the powers that be.

Originally, visa-free programs may transcend politics, and be considered as a measure to promote people-to-people exchanges and trade, using visa-waivers to produce an effect of bringing in consumption by foreign tourists. However, the Tsai government, on the other hand, used the program as a political means, trying, through this approach, to pry open political barriers, or prevent a domino effect. This, we are afraid, is unrealistic and ineffective. However, over the past year, the Tsai government, for the political purpose of covering up the dwindling Mainland tourism and loss of diplomatic partners, added 13 high-risk countries to the visa-free list in one fell swoop.

Whether it is the unproductive New Southward Policy or the impending crisis of the domino effect in diplomatic ruptures, the answer lies in the theme that everybody knows, that is what Tsai Ying-wen defamed with every effort, so much so that she would not, even today, speak out the "1992 Consensus." However, can visa-free programs rescue diplomatic relations and save Taiwan?

This approach both deceives others and is self-deceptive at the same time; in fact, it is not a malady of Tsai Ing-wen alone. The whole government, in name of "transformation justice," is engaged in annihilating political foes with all its might, using pro-Taiwan independence textbook guidelines for manipulating cultural "desinicization," and using the Forward-looking Infrastructure Construction Plan to hollow out the national coffers. Moreover, the government is using the National Languages Act to rupture the social fabric, while stating that Taiwan's prospects are extremely bright. People in North Korean consider that they live in the best and most beautiful country; the DPP's utopia is, in fact, not far from that!

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