Taiwan’s vice president and front-runner to be the island’s next president, William Lai, is in the eye of the storm after China launched widely expected drills near Taiwan in an angry response to his brief visits to the United States this month.
While Lai has repeatedly said ahead of January’s election that he wants to keep the status quo with China, which claims Taiwan as its own, and offered to talk to Beijing, the Chinese government has only reacted with hostility.
“We don’t want to become enemies with China. We can become friends,” Lai told a Taiwanese television station this month.
But in China’s view, Lai is a separatist and “troublemaker through and through”, for comments he first made in 2017 as premier about being a “worker” for Taiwan’s independence, a red line for Beijing.
In 2018, as premier, he told parliament he was a “practical worker for…
