Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te must be having a brain melt. His ideological attacks on Beijing have become more incoherent by the day.
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His ruling Democratic Progressive Party is now a premature lame duck after its abject failure to unseat a single one of the 31 Kuomintang lawmakers targeted in Taiwan’s recent recall votes. Maybe that’s why it is lashing out in all directions.
Its latest attack? Shen Yu-chung, a deputy minister with the island’s Mainland Affairs Council, has accused Beijing of squandering the equivalent of 2 per cent of its entire defence budget on its massive military parade to commemorate China’s victory over imperial Japan.
“They are willing to spend over NT$150 billion [US$4.9 billion] to hold a military exercise while neglecting China’s internal economic, labour and social issues,” Shen reportedly said. “I wonder what the Chinese people think about this situation.”
He also said the parade threatened Taiwan. How? Shouldn’t it be a good thing from the island’s – or at least the DPP’s – point of view that Beijing was wasting money on a military show rather than an actual drill? Or would Shen prefer that the People’s Liberation Army spend the 2 per cent on training soldiers and building more weapons to use against the island?
The DPP didn’t complain when their American boss Donald Trump held his personal military parade in Washington, which celebrated the president’s birthday at a cost of US$30 million to US taxpayers.
