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.
In 2018, as premier, he told parliament he was a "practical worker for Taiwan independence", causing one Chinese newspaper, the widely-read Global Times, to call for China to issue an international arrest warrant for Lai and prosecute him under China's 2005 Anti-Secession Law. What worries Beijing is the idea that Lai could try to change the status quo by declaring the establishment of a Republic of Taiwan, which Lai has said he will not do.
"They are wary and maybe a bit distrustful of William Lai, but it doesn't mean that Beijing cannot be pragmatic," said George Yin, a research fellow at National Taiwan University. Lai became vice president in 2020, standing as Tsai's running mate where they won a landslide victory after warning of the threat to Taiwan from China given Beijing's crackdown on anti-government protests in Hong Kong.
China's Taiwan Affairs Office said his comments were "weird" and "deceitful" given that his "Taiwan independence nature" had not changed.
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