VP Lai's U.S. stopovers kept low-key to build trust with Washington: Scholars
ROC Central News Agency
08/21/2023 05:47 PM
Taipei, Aug. 21 (CNA) Scholars on Monday said Vice President Lai Ching-te's (賴清德) "low-key" recent U.S. transit stops had helped to bolster his image in Washington as a reliable and trustworthy future leader of Taiwan.
Lin Cheng-yi (林正義), a research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of European and American Studies, said that the absence of any meetings with U.S. officials or lawmakers during Lai's stopovers in New York and San Francisco either side of a visit to Paraguay for President Santiago Peña's inauguration had been deliberate.
This showed Taipei and Washington had been working closely to keep things low-key, and that Lai, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) presidential candidate, would not seek to be a diplomatic troublemaker, Lin said at a seminar organized by Taipei-based think tank the Institute for National Policy Research (INPR).
Lai's desire to emulate the "no surprises" approach of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) stands in sharp contrast to January 2022, when the vice president held videoconferences with at least 17 American lawmakers in Los Angeles while en route to Honduras for President Xiomara Castro's inauguration.
Echoing Lin, political science professor and DPP Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said Lai had sought to use the itinerary of his latest stopovers to deflect accusations he was using the trip for electioneering purposes.
Despite his position as the DPP's presidential nominee, Lai strove to downplay perceptions of the trip as a campaign event and instead used it to promote Taiwan's diplomacy on the international stage, Lo added.
Although some criticized the "no surprises" visit as "flavorless," Lo said he believed the trip gave Lai an opportunity to build trust with Washington and show he is not an aggressive troublemaker.
Regarding People's Liberation Army (PLA) military exercises launched in the wake of Lai's U.S. sojourn, Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a scholar with the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), and Kuo Yu-jen (郭育仁), deputy head of INPR, and National Cheng Kung University Political Science professor Wang Hung-jen (王宏仁) all said China's response was targeted more at Washington than Taipei.
The drills came on the heels of the trilateral summit between U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol at Camp David on Aug. 18.
Following that meeting, the three leaders issued a post-summit joint statement to "reaffirm the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as an indispensable element of security and prosperity in the international community."
In addition, China's real estate crisis, rising unemployment rate and ailing economy have all provided the impetus for Beijing to hold the drills as an outlet for public discontent, according to Su.
By framing the drills near Taiwan as a response to Lai's stopovers in the U.S., China is using cognitive warfare to divide Taiwanese society, which must demonstrate unity if it is to build up defense resilience, Su said.
(By Joseph Yeh)
Enditem/ASG
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