Taiwan’s President Takes on China, and His Opponents, in Speaking Tour

Asia Pacific|Taiwan’s President Takes on China, and His Opponents, in Speaking Tour

President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan has been on a speaking tour that he says is aimed at uniting the island against threats from China. But critics say the campaign risks backfiring, deepening political divisions at home while provoking an angry response from Beijing.

Mr. Lai is battling on two fronts: China, which claims Taiwan as its territory and threatens to take it by force, and Taiwan’s opposition parties, which control the legislature and have tried to curb his administration’s policies and powers.

The president’s response has been what he calls “Ten Speeches on National Unity,” but the campaign and the heated responses that it has generated are exposing the very divisions that Mr. Lai says he wants to heal. The contention reflects rifts over Taiwan’s identity, its fraught relationship with China, and how to keep the island secure.

In the three speeches that Mr. Lai has made so far, he has argued that Taiwan’s history, culture and democratic politics are incompatible with Communist-ruled China.

China threatens to “blur the national identity of our people,” Mr. Lai said in his latest speech on Sunday. “China exploits Taiwan’s good will and opportunities for exchanges to carry out united front work and infiltration,” he said, using terms that refer to China’s efforts to advance Beijing’s agenda in the world.

In his first speech, Mr. Lai emphasized Taiwan’s history as a Pacific Ocean island, not as a sometime outpost of imperial China. The People’s Republic of China that Mao Zedong founded in 1949 had never occupied Taiwan, he said. With its own government, military and foreign policy, he added, “of course, Taiwan is a country.”