Who Is Pushing Away from Whom in the Taiwan Strait?

President Tsai is being accused of trying to move Taiwan away from China. Rather than accuse Taipei of breaking an unwritten rule, we should instead ask why China has become less and less attractive to the people of Taiwan 

No matter what President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) says or does nowadays, we can be sure there will be observers who are eager to regard her every move as evidence that she intends to pull Taiwan away from China. Oftentimes the wording used by editorial writers seems to imply that proximity to China is a Law of Nature, with the implication that “pushing away” is a violation of the rules. 

Much of that stems from the notion that “one China” is a principle, a much-used and misused term that suggests a natural state when, in reality, it is very much a political construct used by Beijing to justify its unchanging policy vis-à-vis Taiwan. If the Taiwan-as-part-of-China trope is indeed a principle, then it follows that any position that argues otherwise involves a contradiction of some law.  

My article, published today in The News Lens International, continues here.