Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) on Sunday said something that pierces right to the crux of the problem facing Taiwan.
“We are not afraid of China’s deliberate acts to belittle Taiwan; on the contrary, down deep in our hearts we cannot belittle ourselves. Some people — entrapped by the ‘Greater China’ mindset — have lost [the horizons of] selfhood, lost expectation; not knowing what course to take, [they] succumb to the Chinese communists’ hegemony and are brought over by shortsightedness and lured by profits,” Lee said during a dinner gathering with Taiwanese expatriates in Okinawa, Japan.