Soon after China began its military drills in the skies and seas around Taiwan, it also launched a tirade against the man they said had triggered it: William Lai, the island’s new president.
From the state broadcaster CCTV and the editorial pages of the Global Times, to the foreign ministry spokesperson, the chorus of condemnation of President Lai has been unequivocally acerbic.
The Global Times had already cast him as “arrogant” and “reckless”, and CCTV wrote that he “will certainly be nailed to the pillar of shame in history” and lambasted him for “selling the two-nation theory”. It also warned that if Mr Lai and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) “persist in their doomed path of Taiwan independence they will ultimately crash and burn”.
President Lai’s alleged crime is that in his inauguration speech on Monday he used the word China to describe China, Beijing says that in doing so Mr Lai revealed his true thinking that Taiwan is not China, and they are two different countries. It is, in their eyes, an admission of his “separatist” ideology.
To outsiders this may all sound absurd. But for decades Beijing and Taipei have obfuscated on their definitions of China, and whether Taiwan is part of it. Even former president Tsai was careful to refer to China in euphemistic terms like “the other side of the strait” or “the Beijing authorities”.
Some scholars in Taiwan will tell you such language is important, and that Mr Lai has crossed a dangerous line. Others say Beijing’s loathing for him was already set in stone and his speech has merely offered a rhetorical justification for the latest round of intimidation.
Most agree it doesn’t change the basic fact that Xi Jinping wants China to control Taiwan, and the people of Taiwan emphatically do not.
But no-one in Taiwan is particularly surprised. To them, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is rather predictable. When Mr Lai’s DPP won a third consecutive presidential election here in early January, many wondered how and when Beijing would respond.
The obvious assumption was that it would be after Mr Lai’s term was inaugurated with his first presidential address. So here we are, three days after President Lai’s inauguration, and Beijing has issued a response.