Taiwan President's Gambit: Time for a Harder Line on China

Lai believes Beijing will limit actions against Taipei amid trade war with US, says analyst

- Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien

TAIPEI - After Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te launched a broad drive in March against what he warned was expanding Chinese subversion and spying, the backlash was swift.

Across the Taiwan Strait, China hit back, sending a surge of military planes and ships near the island and warning that he was "playing with fire".

In Taiwan, Mr. Lai's opponents accused him of dangerously goading China.

But Mr. Lai is wagering that he can—and, his supporters say, must—take a harder line against Chinese influence now, notwithstanding the threats from China and the possibility that Taiwan's opposition parties will dig in deeper against his agenda.

Mr. Lai appears to have concluded that China will limit its actions against Taiwan while Beijing focuses on trying to negotiate with US President Donald Trump over the escalating trade war, said Mr. David Sacks, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who monitors Taiwanese affairs.

"The best guess is that he assessed that, if he was going to do this, he should do it at a time when China doesn't want something to complicate its discussions with the United States," Mr. Sacks, in an interview, said of Mr. Lai's security steps.

Taiwan's political parties have for decades argued over whether to try to work with or distance the island from neighboring China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, to be taken by force if Chinese leaders so decide.

The contention has taken on a sharper edge since Mr. Lai declared on March 13 that China was a "foreign hostile force" exploiting Taiwan's freedoms to "divide, destroy and subvert us from within".

He laid out 17 steps to fight back, including restoring military courts to try Taiwanese military personnel accused of espionage and other security crimes.

He wants to more closely monitor Taiwanese people's contacts with China to stop what he said was that country's political exploitation of religious, educational and cultural exchanges.