Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

A recent exchange between Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and former vice president Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) over the KMT’s new, controversy-dogged policy platform is reminiscent of the brutal removal of Hung as the KMT’s presidential candidate in October last year.

Amid a dismal, gloomy and pessimistic atmosphere within the KMT, Hung had stepped forward and volunteered to shoulder a responsibility that no other party heavyweight dared to, presumably out of fear that a predictably disastrous loss in the Jan. 16 elections could end their political careers.

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has pledged that her administration would neither succumb to Chinese pressure nor lower its level of goodwill toward Beijing, urging Taiwan’s increasingly hostile neighbor to return to the calm and rationality it demonstrated for a short period after her inauguration.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in Taipei on Tuesday, Tsai said her May 20 inaugural address — which China has described as an “incomplete test” — was an embodiment of her “maximum benevolence and flexibility.”