Business community gives Lai a reality check

In an event organized by the Straits Exchange Foundation in Taipei on Monday to send Spring Festival wishes to businesspeople from Taiwan island doing business in the Chinese mainland, Lai Ching-te, head of the island's authorities, delivered an inopportune speech propagating his secessionist stance.

Although he is well aware that the island's businesspeople doing business in the mainland value a stable and peaceful cross-Strait relationship, the secessionist-minded leader of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party still felt no qualms about ruining the festive atmosphere of the annual activity by openly peddling his separatist policy and calling on his listeners to speak in one voice with him.

That some Taiwan businesspeople interrupted his speech on the spot voicing their hope that Lai would do more to prevent the situation across the Strait from going bad to worse, or even beyond remedy, shows the unpopularity of Lai's separatist stance. The Taiwan businesspeople know what dire consequences will result if Lai pushes his secessionist ambition too far.

Ironically, Lai, who has just vowed to do anything he can to serve the Taiwan businesspeople, didn't respond to his listeners' outcry at all. Standing on the rostrum, embarrassingly tongue-tied with a fake smile on his face, before the host of the event stepped forward to end the awkward silence by raising some new topics, Lai should have realized the big difference between disseminating his secessionist line among his DPP colleagues and the Taiwan business community, the backbone of the island's economy.

Fundamentally, the Lai-led DPP's separatist policy is divorced from the actual needs of the Taiwan society for peace and stability.

And with the return of the "America first" Donald Trump administration of the United States, the Lai authorities will be fooling themselves if they bet on it backing their cause. They should be clear-minded that the investment from Taiwan and the island's advanced semiconductor industry are what the US values most, rather than the DPP's separatist cause, and the party will be classified as a negative property the moment Washington considers the cost is too high to cover the US' outlay on the thorny Taiwan question.