My Take | Even his biggest fans in Japan are turning against Taiwan’s William Lai
Endless provocations of Beijing and cross-strait tensions are starting to worry Tokyo, which is also losing confidence in its long-time US ally
Western cheerleaders of Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te love his constant poking of Beijing in the eye. People from the Asia-Pacific, though, are less cheery about the incessant and often pointless provocations.
Sankei Shimbun, a conservative newspaper, compared Lai with the disgraced Chen Shui-bian, the island’s first DPP president who was mired in corruption scandals. His time in office worsened polarisation at home and antagonism with Beijing. Sound familiar?
Thanks to high tariffs and borderline blackmail on forced investments in the United States, even Japan and South Korea, actual allies of Washington with long-standing formal treaties, are waking up to how unreliable and even threatening Washington has become.
But Lai, who faces the same economic coercion from the US, prefers to double down on provoking Beijing. He now talks about the “purity” of Taiwan, presumably as opposed to the impure mainland, the kind of racial language fitting for a proto-fascist.