Indeed, the current government of Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te (William Lai) is even more hardline than that of Tsai Ing-wen. Lyle Goldstein, a scholar on East Asia issues and director of the Asia Program at the Defense Priorities think tank, notes that instead of trying to adopt a low profile and play down any claims to an explicitly independent status for Taiwan, as did Tsai, “Lai has lurched toward formal independence with a succession of speeches making the case for Taiwanese nationhood.” Indeed, Lai devoted nearly all of his initial national address to making the case for Taiwan’s right to sovereignty. As one prominent Taiwanese columnist noted: “Never before has a Taiwanese president devoted an entire speech to laying out clearly, point-by-point, and unequivocally how Taiwan is unquestionably a sovereign nation.”
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