CHINA-TAIWAN
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Reacting to Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen's speech at her inaugration on May 20, 2016, the spokesman of the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), Ma Xiaoguang said on May 21 that “Only by confirming adherence to the common political foundation of the 1992 consensus that embodies the one-China principle can cross-strait affairs authorities continue regular communication.” The International Herald Leader, a paper under the official Xinhua news agency, published a surprisingly sharp and lengthy attack on new Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on May 24, 2016. Wang Weixing, a member of China's Association of Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and senior PLA officer and Director of Foreign Studies with the People’s Liberation Army’s Academy of Military Sciences, wrote: “From the human point of view, as a single woman politician, [Tsai] does not have the emotional burden of love, of ‘family’, of children, [so her] political style and executive strategy tends to be emotional, personal and extreme.” He claimed that because the Tsai family was well connected to the Japanese invaders during the second world war, “their historical memory, perception and understanding of the Japanese colonial rule is radically different from feelings shared by the people on both sides of [the Taiwan Strait] who hated and rose against the Japanese enemies”. He said that since Tsai’s father had more than one wife, it negatively affected her personality, such as causing her to lack a sense of security. Predicting that Tsai Ing-wen would be different from all her predecessors, he said she would seek “hidden independence” and provoke Beijing to destroy peace in the strait. Wang wrote that “When we deal with Tsai, [we] must always consider important factors such as her experience, personality and psychological traits. This is essentially a contest of will and wisdom.”
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