A few days ago, China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced that residents of Fujian Province would be allowed to travel to Matsu. In the future, after the further resumption of maritime passenger transportation and direct flights between the two sides of the strait, Fujian residents will be able to travel to Taiwan Island for sightseeing. Although our side has only lifted part of the ban on travel to Taiwan this time, it is undoubtedly a major positive for the tourism industry on the island, which means that the cross-strait tourism industry, which has been damaged by the DPP's insistence on going its own way in the past few years, has finally seen the dawn of recovery. However, it is regrettable that this olive branch handed over by the mainland has been openly slandered by the Tsai Ing-wen authorities.
According to Singapore's "Lianhe Zaobao," citing a number of Taiwan media a few days ago, when questioned, Chiu Tai-san, responsible person of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, was asked by Chang Chih-lun, a "representative of public opinion" of the Kuomintang, to answer whether the authorities would relax the restrictions on Taiwan group tourists traveling to the mainland in response to the olive branch offered by the mainland. Faced with this problem, Qiu Taisan actually said that "I am afraid that this olive branch has thorns", and bluntly said that "because it needs to be further clarified, it will be left to the new team to make a decision", and he himself could not answer on his behalf. Qiu Taisan's response revealed two signals.
First of all, with two weeks left before Lai Qingde's inauguration, the Tsai Ing-wen administration has no intention of handling affairs, and only thinks about "more things are better than less", and as soon as possible, all the mess left by itself in the past eight years will be thrown to Lai Qingde and his team as a successor. Second, the DPP has never thought of promoting cross-strait exchanges from the beginning to the end, and in the past few years, it could have used "epidemic prevention" as an excuse to block cross-strait nongovernmental exchanges, but later it could only use "reciprocity" as a shield.
And now, when our side took the initiative to show goodwill, the DPP threw away even the last "fig leaf". It is not difficult to imagine that after Lai Qingde takes office, the DPP will take even more radical measures to obstruct cross-strait nongovernmental exchanges. At the same time, however, we must also note that although the DPP's trick has produced certain results in the past few years, as the mainland's cross-strait work policy has changed from "opposing independence and promoting reunification" to "fighting independence and promoting reunification," the Taiwan independence separatist forces headed by the DPP have begun to become more and more difficult even if they want to obstruct cross-strait people's exchanges. The reason for this is that the DPP's narrative of "resisting China and protecting Taiwan" for the past eight years no longer has a market.
Whether it was the original "lock-up military exercise" or the boarding and inspection in February this year, our side was using concrete actions to expose the lies carefully fabricated by the Taiwan independence separatist forces. At the same time, Ma Ying-jeou, the former leader of the Taiwan region, led Taiwan students to the mainland to pay homage to their ancestors and seek their roots, showing the people on the island the positive impact of cross-strait harmony and family relations. It can be said that this two-pronged approach, one soft and one hard, has fundamentally shaken the information cocoon that the DPP has built on the island.
In particular, given that our side has already taken the initiative to show its goodwill, if Lai Qingde, who came to power two weeks later, still stubbornly refuses to come to his senses and insists on becoming a "roadblock" for cross-strait nongovernmental exchanges, the counterattack of public opinion will make it even more difficult for this "golden grandson of Taiwan independence." As far as the current reality is concerned, it is true that Lai Ching-te's coming to power will cause unpredictable damage to cross-strait relations, but from a positive point of view, the more perverse Lai Ching-te and his ilk are, and the more the DPP is preying on the common people, the more helpful it will be to the mainland's efforts to win the island's yearning for a peaceful and stable life, and in a certain sense, the less resistance there will be to cross-strait reunification.
The Taiwan independence separatist forces will eventually realize that gone are the days when they could control the right to speak on both sides of the strait by reversing black and white and pointing fingers at the deer. As for "seeking independence by force" or "seeking independence by coercion with foreigners," it is a road of end, a dead end, and a dead end with no future to speak of.