Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Earlier this month, Typhoon Jebi battered Japan’s Kansai region. As a result of fake news created by the Chinese government in collaboration with pro-unification advocates in Taiwan, Su Chii-cherng (蘇啟誠), who was director-general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office’s Osaka branch, was pushed over the edge and took his own life — the only Taiwanese casualty of the typhoon.

However, not even Su’s suicide put an end to the political war of words.

Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) continues to imitate Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) political stance by saying that “the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family.”

Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆), one of the student leaders of the 2014 Sunflower movement, said in an op-ed in the British publication The Diplomat: “Ko’s accommodation of Beijing has not assuaged its assertiveness toward Taiwan in any way. Rather, it has given Beijing more leverage to infiltrate Taiwan’s domestic political debates and signaled a reincarnation of the KMT’s [Chinese Nationalist Party] past approach.”