(Bloomberg) -- Taiwan President Lai Ching-te urged the ruling party to better develop the public’s sense of belonging to the democratically run archipelago, comments that risk worsening his difficult relationship with China.
Speaking at the Democratic Progressive Party’s congress in Taipei on Sunday, Lai said that “we will make the greatest possible effort to let all citizens know their own history and culture, and to build a national identity of the 23 million people living in Taiwan as a community of shared destiny.”
The DPP had a duty to “unite the people, resist annexation and safeguard national sovereignty,” Lai said in the televised speech. He delivered the remarks in the local minnan dialect, rather than the Mandarin spoken on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
President Xi Jinping’s government is highly sensitive to any perceived shifts in phrasing from Taiwan’s leaders regarding the island’s status. China blasted Lai’s inauguration speech, saying it “sent a dangerous signal of seeking independence.” Any talk of a “national identity” for those living in the self-ruled democracy that Beijing considers its own would likely be considered a challenge to the status quo.
China has responded to Lai taking office in May with a range of measures to ramp up pressure on him, including holding large military drills around the main island that the US called “provocations.” It also fleshed out laws aimed at supporters of independence, setting out punishments for specific offenses that range from prison time to the death penalty.
Lai’s speech could also worry policymakers in Washington. While President Joe Biden has upset Beijing by repeatedly saying the US would held Taiwan defend itself if the People’s Liberation Army attacked, he also said after Lai’s election win in January that the US did not support independence for Taiwan.
The US has traditionally adopted a policy of strategic ambiguity, acknowledging China’s historical claims to sovereignty over Taiwan, and maintains only unofficial relations with Taipei while pledging defensive assistance.
Taiwan has been ruled by a separate government since the Kuomintang lost the Chinese Civil War around 1949 and has a very different society than the one across the strait. People in Taiwan enjoy a broad ranges of rights denied to people in China, namely freedom of speech and the rights to vote and protest against the government.
A poll by National Chengchi University in Taipei released in June shows that some 64% of the respondents identified themselves as Taiwanese — a figure that matches the highest level in the survey going back to 1992. Another 30% viewed themselves as both Taiwanese and Chinese, and 2% only as Chinese.
The latest survey used data collected over the first six months of the year. The poll compilers don’t provide a margin of error.
The KMT, now an opposition party that is Beijing’s preferred negotiating partner because they share a similar cultural background, criticized Lai’s speech.
KMT lawmaker Lo Chih-chiang was cited as saying in local media reports that it smacked of “ideology and nationalism” and was a sign that Lai was moving toward despotism.
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