The New York Times described an unprecedentedly large Chinese military exercise aimed at surrounding Taiwan with a mock blockade on Monday as “a warning to Taiwan’s government after the island’s president, Lai Ching-te, made a speech on National Day last week that China regarded as a message promoting independence.” I was in the front row for that speech. It seems that what Beijing regards as subversive separatism is subject to interpretation.
Lai’s address on Taiwanese National Day, a holiday commemorating the uprising that resulted in the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1911, was hardly belligerent. “Their dream was to establish a democratic republic of the people,” the president said of those who “overthrew the imperial regime” of the Qing dynasty. “Their ideal was to create a nation of freedom, equality, and benevolence. However, the dream of democracy was engulfed in the raging flames of war.” Lai invoked the great battles of China’s revolutionary war — a war Chiang Kai-shek’s forces lost — and the Taiwan Strait crises that soon followed. “Though the Republic of China was driven out of the international community, the people of Taiwan have never exiled themselves,” Lai added. If this is a poor substitute for raw nationalistic bellicosity, it will have to do.
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