Shane Leary joins Miles Yu to discuss his recent trip to Taiwan, the historic inauguration of Lai Ching Te of Taiwan, the People's Republic of China's subsequent military exercises, and recent protests over parliamentary reforms.
China Insider is a weekly podcast project from Hudson Institute's China Center, hosted by Miles Yu, who provides weekly news that mainstream American outlets often miss, as well as in-depth commentary and analysis on the China challenge and the free world’s future.
Episode Transcript
This transcription is automatically generated and edited lightly for accuracy. Please excuse any errors.
Miles Yu:
Welcome to China Insider, a podcast from the Hudson Institute's China Center. I am Miles Yu, senior fellow and director of the China Center. Join me each week along with my colleague, Shane Leary, for our analysis of the major events concerning China, China threat, and their implications to the US and beyond.
Shane Leary:
It's Wednesday, May 29th and today Miles and I discuss President Lai of Taiwan's inauguration, the Chinese reaction and military drills that followed, and the concurrent protests over proposed parliamentary reforms in Taiwan Miles reflects on his experiences with these events having been in Taiwan as they occurred and how this differs from the perspective of the news cycle. Miles, how are you?
Miles Yu:
Very good, Shane. Nice to be with you again.
Shane Leary:
Yes, wonderful. Well, so we have a lot to dig into here. So you were present in Taiwan last week where President Lai was inaugurated. During his speech he pledged he would neither yield nor provoke Beijing. Three days later we saw military exercises from the People's Republic of China. And then the day after that, while the military exercise were ongoing, tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets in Taiwan to protest reforms in Taiwan's parliament initiated by Lai’s opposition, the KMT. So I'd like to get into all of this, but let's just take it step by step. First, how long were you in Taiwan and can you tell us about the inauguration and live speech?
Miles Yu:
Yeah, I was there with the former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. We went there for the inauguration. It was quite an amazing festivity in conjunction with the publication of the Chinese edition of Mr. Pompeo's book. It is called Never Give an Inch. So it was widely received. We actually, in addition to the inauguration, we actually had some other site events as well, including the public speech given by Mr. Pompeo. Several hundred people showed up and of course he signed some books and he has a huge fan. I think if he run for public office in Taiwan, he would win. The speech itself is pretty amazing. He give the speech to the world. In other words, I mean it's not just to the people of Taiwan. The message is very firm and strong, yet very reasonable. So, we have a president who is now built his career as a [inaudible].
He is not a bureaucratic upstart. There are a lot of people who are very excellent managerial talents. Mr. Lai emerged as an activist and he was a doctor, medical doctor to be more accurate. And he was deeply into the ethos of the Democratic Progressive Party DPP. So he's been maturing. He's been a very thoughtful. Yet if you listen to his speech, there is some kind of a strength in his speech, which is very reassuring. Reassuring as well. Yet he has four years as vice president. He saw the practical side of diplomacy, practical side of governance. It’s a pretty good combination. I hope under his leadership people, Taiwan will have a great achievement in our words for the next four years. And he is also quite cosmopolitan, I might say. So we had very nice meeting with him after the inauguration and he was very keen in how we would react to his speech and we thought it was fantastic.
Shane Leary:
So how central was the issue of cross-Strait relations as opposed to say his domestic policies and how would you describe his platform in terms of his vision for the politics of Taiwan?
Miles Yu:
That's actually a very good question because he ran for the president of Taiwan. He won. And this 2024 election is very different from any previous election since 1996 in the sense that the issue dominating the debate, dominating the campaign is not just a cross-Strait relationship. It has less and less to do with China, more to do with domestic governance issues. All three candidates, 2024 candidates, focus more on each other's leadership qualities and domestic issues, particular housing technology and the profound ethical and the legal challenges posed by say artificial intelligence, other technologies. So this is a very, very vibrant normal society. So, I think it may have something to do with the kind of a PRC fatigue. China has been threatened, Taiwan, every single election basically use of arms in US. C in this case does well, so people just pay less attention to it. I mean during the two day, so-called punishment drills conducted by PLA around Taiwan Island. I was right there in the middle of Taipei. Literally you don't see any sign of people caring about this. People really don't care about this. So there is nothing there. That means that psychologically, at least the PRC has completely miscalculated.
Shane Leary:
And some have characterized Lai as having been, let's say more of a firebrand when he was younger, calling for independence. Whereas they say he's perhaps more moderate today, although it seems like he talks about Taiwan's position in the international system and the way that you have that there's no need for independence because it's already a sovereign nation. Is that an accurate characterization? Would you say that shows a change in thinking or is that pretty consistent。
Miles Yu:
In American politics, several years ago we had Senator John McCain, John McCain branded himself as a maverick firebrand. But if you look at John McCain's policy, foreign domestic was pretty mild, moderate, very thoughtful. He's very similar to that. Of course, this is a totally different political background. President Lai [carries] a very balanced approach to foreign and domestic policies. He is not an irrational activist making major policies considering the security and prosperity of Taiwan without any sort of a practical consideration. In his inaugural speech, and I listened carefully, there is a great balance of continuity and changes. Most of his continuity, I mean nothing that he said has been new, but he said emphatically in a very different direction. For example, you mentioned about the issue of independence or not. I mean he said, Hey listen, this is first of all to China is not a real business.
Secondly, People’sRepublicof China and the government in Taiwan and the country of Taiwan do not belong to each other. That has been said many, many years ago, at least for 20, 25 years. So there's nothing new there. But the Western press reported is this is something entirely new. It's not the foreign press into the trap of the Chinese strategy of red herring. Chinese government always tried to find something to pinpoint President Lai has moved away from normal, he has not. And in the speech he focused a lot about how to strengthen Taiwan's domestic economy and enhance technology. [He used] one phrase, I thought it was very interesting. He wants to build Taiwan as the economic empire where the Sun would never set. That's pretty ambitious for island country right now. Of course, Taiwan has the qualification to say things like that because Taiwan has been leading in high technology and some of the major economic centers in the world.
Secondly, he also strengthened the importance of national defense. He said it really increased budget and effort on national defense. And of course, that brings out to the question of the US Taiwan relationship because the US has the Taiwan Relations Act that would ensure Taiwan [has] the necessary defense capabilities. But in the meantime, President Lai also emphasized the capability of indigenous manufacturing of key weapons platforms and Taiwan. As you see under the previous President Tsai, they developed their indigenous submarine. So that basically is one of the very important examples. Now, here comes the two key parts of that, that is a cross-Strait relationship between Taiwan and China. And he said, Hey, listen, I want to have dialogue, but the dialogue has to be based upon the fundamental principle that the people's republic of China and the Republic of China in Taiwan do not belong to each other. Again, this is nothing new, but he said, this is condition. I'm going to talk with you. I want to have peace, prosperity, wars no good for anybody, but China doesn't take that very nicely. So as you can see, they reacted pretty irrationally and they make it fool of themselves.
Shane Leary:
I want to talk about China's reaction. So the inauguration took place on Monday the 20th, and there's three days until the military exercises start. What was the initial reaction like politically within China domestically over those three days?
Miles Yu:
This is very interesting because the speech was so powerful, so well delivered. It generally enormous interest and curiosity among people in mainland China. The entire speech, the events was blocked, censored inside China. If you live there it’s as if there's nothing here, but there's a lot of people who actually went to the websites, TV shows in Taiwan in the world, YouTube for example, which is banned in China. So if you look at some of the Taiwanese programs, some of the American and European broadcast programs, I think BBC carried the live entire inaugural events. You can see the comments made by people from China. It was a tone of celebration. It was a tone of hardy congratulations. It was a term of oblique condemnation of China's repression and the [inaudible] China would have something like this, which explained why in the first three days the Chinese government remained paralyzed.
They didn't know what to do, yes or no. So they just as if nothing happened. So, there was no reaction at all from Mainland China on this inauguration on what President Lai said. So, because they want to minimize the inspirational impact of the speech itself. If China reacted immediately to the speech, that will gain more, give more attention to the speech itself and more people will know it. We'll find out how this speech will win. So, of course, as you say, three days later, China announced and execute[d] a called a punishment drill. And the drill itself actually is very peculiar because they act[ed] as if this is a big deal to show China the resolve to punish the separatist independence, President Lai. If you look at this for the first time, this drill was limited to a very short period of time without the declaration of the no fly zone.
In other words, they're telling the international community, don't worry, you can still fly your commercial plane, you can still fly your passenger ladder. So passenger aircraft, and that's very new. Secondly, they deliberately excluded the area of exercises that belonged to Japan and some other countries too, because the previous drill Chinese missiles landed in the Japanese EEZ zone and Japanese government protested rigorously. So I consider that as some kind of a surrender in terms of concession made by China because they know this is just a show and they don't want to get more enemies, the more enemies than necessary. Thirdly, China and this time used more maritime police vessels. I think there were four big ones in the east coast of Taiwan than just the warships. But most importantly, they made a big deal out of this. I mean dozens of ships over there, but there's no live firing whatsoever, this whole drill, so-called punishment campaign, is just a computer simulated cartoons, not their exercise. So this whole thing is just a farce in the end it sends a message to the world [that] the Chinese government just bullies. They cannot react to rational events with rational reasoning. Only thing they know is just to bully whoever they don't want. Secondly, this whole campaign means nothing to people of Taiwan. It's not a win-win, it’s a lose-lose for China.
Shane Leary:
That's fascinating that as you say, it seems like they're actually sort of ramping down the exercises as opposed to previous ones. I'm just curious, I mean you said on the ground there wasn't much of a reaction. Is this something, being in Taipei that you can see occurring? Do you see Chinese aircraft and vessels and things like that on the horizon? Or are people largely just sort of unaware of it if they're not checking the news?
Miles Yu:
Oh, no, no, no. I mean the Taiwanese defense forces were ready for China. If they violated the sovereign water, the 12 miles line, the Taiwanese will shoot them down, no question about it. As a matter of fact, there are subsequent video footages of Chinese ministry of national Defense, the footage shows that the Chinese aircraft, actually, they, they're locked in by the Taiwanese radar. So it's real target. So I think China knows this, what's at stake, and I'm sure that the United States pretty much were alert at a different level. So I think China knows this is not really a [inaudible] situation, but they have to do the show. They have to show to the Chinese people domestically that they're strong. They're resolved to punish a separatist. Now about the separatist, I said many times, and I say it again in this episode, the so-called Taiwanese independence separatist.
It's just red herring. Only the Chinese government is talking about this. What is the independence for Taiwan? People in Taipei and in Washington and in Beijing, they're talking about completely different things. Now, the fundamental thing about independence in Taiwan is the reality, the status quo, the what is status quo? Status quo is de facto independence. Taiwanese have been running their own government, their own defense department, their own economy, their own administrative measures since 1949. So the Chinese people's Republic of China has zero sovereign or administrative claim over even one square inch of territory in Taiwan. So that's the fundamental reality. So independence is status quo. Status quo is independence. Now, the Taiwanese government, when Taiwanese people have been seeking something else, that is, they're seeking for international recognition of their de facto independence. So that's what they're striving for. So we're talking about international recognition. Now what the Chinese were talking about the independence in Taiwan, I think it really touched upon the third realm of the meaning of the independence.
That is the collaboration of independence. Do you really declare there is such independence in Taiwan that has something to do with the Chinese imperial hubristic face saving, right? You cannot face reality, but then at least you don't have to say the emperor has no clothes on. That's basically three things. One is the reality is independence, and secondly is international recognition of the reality. And thirdly is whether you declare the independence or not. So I think this is something we have to really talk about, figure out exactly what it means by the three parties. Now of course, secretary Pompeo is the only senior American politician who has seen the danger of this kind of conceptual ambiguity about the definition of Taiwanese independence. So he's the only senior American politician who has openly championed Americans diplomatic recognition of independence of Taiwan. And Taiwanese government has said many, many times, not just by President Lai, but also by his predecessors that there's no need for Taiwan, particularly independence, because Taiwan is already an independent country and its name is Republic of China in Taiwan. Very clear. So China, in other words, has set himself in some kind of independence trap of its own making. You cannot explain away these three very different definitions of independence. I think China all cares both its declaration.
Shane Leary:
I want to talk about the protests, which began on the 24th. What is prompting these protests specifically? What specifically are the reforms on the table in Taiwan's parliament?
Miles Yu:
This is pretty amazing because with all these momentum events taking, going on, taking place around Taiwan with all the PLA aircraft and the ships and Beijing's chase pumping vow of punishment people in Taiwan, they devote overwhelming attention to something totally different to this parliamentary move to reform some procedures mostly is about the procedures leading to the charge of contempt of Congress, the equivalent of that, in other words, in what way the administrative officials who should be held accountable? When you are called or subpoenaed by Parliament Taiwan is called the legislative grant, you have to really fulfill your duty to the constitution and to the department. Now of course, the devil are in the details. So in the current political layout in Taiwan where the executive branch is won by the DPP, but the legislative branch is dominated by the opposition, the DPP and the TPP Coalition, the Taiwan Peoples Party, the...
Shane Leary:
KMT.
Miles Yu:
The KMT and TPP, right? This suspicion, a mutual distrust out of the campaign is so deep, so strong. There is a very strong sense of conspiracy. In other words, the K-M-T-D-P-P proposal to reform parliament meant to the DPP supporters that the KMT and TPP would like to use the parliament procedure to paralyze President Lai’s administration to hold them in contempt for some minute details of the congressional hearing process. For example, the DPP supporters charge that in the proposal you are asked question in the hearing, you are not even allowed to shout back at the question and you were not even allowed to reply in a strong way. And that will be held as contempt of Congress, right? So this is basically, I'm sure there's both sides that have some legitimate arguments for this. There should be some kind of procedural accountability on both sides when it comes to parliamentary inquiry.
Every democracy has that, but in the current situation, particularly the timing is terrible for the KMT and for TPP because the timing is that the nation is surrounded by an aggressor threatening to invade you. In the meantime, you are trying to sort of play the politics in the eyes of the DPP supporters. So they see the connection between the eternal enemy and inside the fifth column that's basically right up the ordinary people nationwide. And I don't think the K-M-T-T-P-P coalition really predicted such a strong reaction. My hotel in downtown Taipei was minutes away from major gathering square. Each night, tens of thousands of people showed up there, but they showed up all in a very orderly fashion. It was impossible to even imagine if you have this much, people went to on street in the heat of the night in Pari, in London, or in New York City, in Washington DC there must be some kind of some violence, but not in Taiwan. Everybody was very, very emotional. Everybody participating in this democratic process, yet there was no violence. Everybody's orderly. So that shows you the maturity of Taiwan democracy. Listen, the crisis by the parliamentary reform is not over yet. So as we speak, there is still some kind of reading going on. The interesting about the KMT and TPP coalition in the Legislative Yuan is that the TPP really most of them are the base voters of the DPP.
And so many of them actually, I think they'll actually regretted voting for TPP. So it may well be the case that a large number of the TPP they split, the middle third party will come back to TPP will strengthened the incumbent party in Taiwan.
Shane Leary:
Interesting. And you mentioned, I mean, the maturity that you perceive in Taiwan's democracy. I'm wondering, how polarized, especially given the disagreements over the China question, these things, how polarized do you think Taiwan is as a country in comparison to say the United States right now?
Miles Yu:
Oh, United States is much more polarized than Taiwan. Yeah, there are some basic United States is polarized in a sense that some of the fundamental procedures that made America worldwide famous have been of almost criminally timed to it, right? Yeah. So the institutions were in crisis in the United States, Taiwan is different. Taiwan's large framework is done. People's participation is really extraordinary. On the other hand, every issue in Taiwan is thoroughly discussed and some of them are pretty emotional charging from treason, infiltration to aptitude, you name it. But I think there is a gradual consensus that everybody in Taiwan, they participate. They debate because the love of Taiwan, they recognize Taiwan is our country. Even the KMT come up and say the one country two formula will never work in Taiwan. So in other words, they rejected China's formula for unification of so-called mother land. You cannot unify with somebody when you never be part of the union. During the Chinese drills, the chairman of the KMT actually came out openly condemned China for his use of force to threaten people of Taiwan. President Lai actually played the unifying role because he did come out and say, listen, we're all Taiwanese. Let's just be rational and do things right. And of course there are a lot of people who pretty truly believe the other side harbor some kind of ulterior motive.
Shane Leary:
So you have sort of expressed over the course of this conversation some optimism for the DPP and Lai’s presidency. You've mentioned that maybe the coalition between the KMT and the TPP is actually more fragile than people think, but what would you say, I mean, just to close this out, what do you think the prospects are for Lai’s presidency? Will he have difficulty getting his policies through? Do you think it will be smooth?
Miles Yu:
Lai is a very good president and he will be a great president because unlike many of his predecessors, Lai is not only a good manager. Taiwan is a country whole of talented managers. There are very well trained engineers, doctors, accountants, historians occasionally, but they do things right professionally. This is basically a country of middle class bourgeoisie, as you will if you will. However, Lai is different. He not really can run things. He also a leader, he has a vision. If you read his speech, he lay out all the visions over there. And Taiwan needs a leader more than manager. And this is the perfect timing for him. He won because he gave Taiwanese people the hope and the vision that most people actually more people would prefer. President Tsai is pretty good, but President Tsai is almost like he is very strong in solving problems and making the transactional matters very well done.
Lai can only not only do that, he can provide vision, leadership, and the difference between a leader and a manager is that managers always concerned about how to do things right. And the leader is predominantly concerned about how to do the right thing. And I think the President Lai has a perfect combination of both. That's why I'm very hopeful that under President Lai’s four years leadership, Taiwan will have a pretty big accomplishment to be made. And with the help like the United States and a lot of friends, allies, Taiwan will be very, very popular. And I think Taiwan State international status will be recognized by more. And I must say this, when I say international, that's the case. This inauguration is unlike any previous inaugurations in recent history of Taiwan where you have so many international friends there. And the largest one is actually from Japan.
Mrs. Abe, the widow of the former Prime Minister was there, and there's a lot of Japanese politicians there too, people from Europe, from Lithuania, from Czech Republic. And so you have a lot of people there. And that means that the global dialogue on the cross-Strait relationship in China has fundamentally changed in the last eight years on the president, time changed from the issue purely about sovereignty. In other words, whether Taiwan should belong to China or not, to one of freedom, democracy versus tyranny and dictatorship. And that's basically, it is so clear, and I think that this is, the timing is perfect for people. 23 million Taiwanese people deserve international recognition. In 1971, the international community gave China People's Republic of China the representation at United Nation. But also, unfortunately we did that at the expense of people in Taiwan. And it is time to actually park that misfortune. And I think even recently in US Congress in Washington, in so many capitals of the West, people began to go back to 1971 to reconsider the so-called Resolution 2758. And here at the Hudson, we actually have some conferences here and there just to talk about this kind of issues, I think you don't necessarily have an immediate solution, but at least the issues have to be talked about so that we can reach a very realistic, practical, and value of forming solution.
Shane Leary:
I think that's well said. And Miles, these are fascinating insights, especially given that you were on the ground there, can cut through some of the chatter in the news cycle. I think that's all the time we have this week. But we wish president Lai the best in the early days of his administration. And I'm sure there will be much more for us to talk about in the coming weeks and months as things progress.
Miles Yu:
Great. Thank you and I look forward to sharing thoughts with you again next week, Shane.
Shane Leary:
Yeah, talk to you next week.
Miles Yu:
Thank you for listening to this episode of China Insider. I'd like to thank my colleague Shane Leary, for taking part in this undertaking every week. I'd also like to thank our executive producer, Philip Hegseth who works tirelessly and professionally behind the scenes for every episode. To make sure we deliver the best quality podcast to you, the listeners, if you enjoy the show, please spread the word. For Chinese listeners, please check our monthly review and analysis episode in Chinese. We'll see you next time.