Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The Lunar New Year is traditionally a time for family reunions and celebrations, which made the news this week that Lee Ching-yu (李凈瑜) has been barred once again by Chinese authorities from visiting her husband, Lee Ming-che (李明哲), for several months a hard blow for his family, friends and supporters.

In keeping with Chinese Communist Party tradition, wives and other relatives of those the Chinese government has imprisoned or detained without trial need to be punished as well, through enforced isolation, loss of jobs or schooling, and a myriad of other petty, vindictive measures.

Since taking office, the one thing President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been reluctant to do is break the decades-long ambiguity surrounding the “status quo,” the one term that manages to trump the so-called “1992 consensus” in terms of the variety of definitions given to them.

Fortunately, that is expected to change later this year. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) told the state-owned Central News Agency in an interview that the party plans to introduce a new resolution in September that could offer a clearer definition of the “status quo.”