Sky News Op-Ed Echoes Deep Blue Talking Points On Lai’s Eswatini Trip, Prospects of Unification

by Brian Hioe

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Photo Credit: Lai Ching-te/Facebook

A RECENT ARTICLE by Hilton Yip in Sky News proves the usual from the author. Indeed, Yip once again lashes out at any and all actions by the DPP as showing weakness, while repeating hardline KMT talking points–which do not even necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the party as a whole.

Yip specifically takes issue with Lai Ching-te’s recent visit to Eswatini. After having previously had a planned trip to Eswatini cancelled due to Chinese pressure leading to the cancellation of overflight privileges for Lai’s plane, Lai instead traveled to Eswatini on board King Mswati III’s personal plane, which was sent to Taiwan for Lai.

Yip finds this undignifying, suggesting that Lai’s popularity will suffer in Taiwan as a result of his having to resort to such subterfuge. Yip also lashes out at Eswatini as a country with a smaller economy and population than Taiwan, taking the view that it is beneath Taiwanese political leaders to travel to Eswatini in this way.

Consequently, Yip suggests a contrast with the dignified manner by which KMT chair Cheng Li-wun traveled to China to meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping, and asserts that international pressure will continue on the DPP due to its refusal to recognize the 1992 Consensus. Yip also depicts Western world leaders as accommodating to a new global order led by Xi.

Indeed, one notes that on other occasions, Yip has attempted to depict the DPP as an authoritarian force, or otherwise suggests that political developments he does not like are illegal. Writing last year on the “Great Recall Movement” in Foreign Policy, Yip wrote that recalls in themselves were illegal. Taiwan is among the minority of countries to have a legal mechanism allowing for recalls in the manner it does, but the right to recall is a long-enshrined constitutional right. That the recall is such a highly prized constitutional right is why members of the public have reacted strongly in the past, on numerous occasions, on efforts to make it more difficult for recalls to take place, such as by instituting ID checks for recalls.

Yip went on to frame the recalls as DPP-organized. Yet that recalls were not, in fact, DPP-organized was visible in the uncoordinated way that recall campaigns were carried out across Taiwan by volunteers. That the recalls were not DPP-organized was all too evident in that the recalls did not succeed, whereas the DPP party machine would have potentially been able to mobilize voters on a larger scale. Recall organizers, on the contrary, lashed out at the DPP for not taking as proactive a role as it could have in recalls.

To this extent, Yip depicted the arrest of Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je on corruption charges as DPP-orchestrated persecution of a political enemy. There is no evidence to suggest this, charges against Ko originate from KMT city councilor Chung Hsiao-ping, and in a similar timeframe, DPP Taoyuan mayor Cheng Wen-tsan was jailed on corruption charges.

Indeed, Yip’s pro-unification views–claiming that the US is in decline and that Taiwan’s future inevitably lies with China–undergird much of his argumentation. In this sense, claims about Lai’s recent travel to Eswatini or about the Great Recall Movement last year are a tautology–since they run counter to Yip’s views on China’s rise and the inevitability of unification, they must therefore be criticized. One notes that another recent article by Yip in Sky News claims that Taiwan is on the “brink of reunification” as the “ruling party struggles to contain a wave of pro-Beijing sentiment”.

But one notes that, in this, Yip has become a supporter of KMT chair Cheng Li-wun, who was among the most strident in the KMT in pushing the narrative that Lai’s trip to Eswatini was denigrating to Taiwan. Views in the KMT were divided when Lai’s trip was cancelled, with some members of the KMT criticizing China’s actions. Nevertheless, Yip has come to toe the line of the current controversial leadership of the party, in spite of the fact that members of the KMT are reevaluating whether Cheng’s pro-Beijing stance could impact the party’s overall electoral viability. Perhaps this should not surprise either.