My Take | Even his biggest fans in Japan are turning against Taiwan’s William Lai

Western cheerleaders of Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te love his constant poking of Beijing in the eye. People from the Asia-Pacific, though, are less cheery about the incessant and often pointless provocations.

Japanese media pundits have been among the biggest fans of the leadership of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), even before Lai entered office. It’s not a good sign when even they are turning against him. That’s not hard to understand. If there was to be a shooting war over Taiwan, it would affect Japan a lot more than faraway Europe and North America.Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest daily, has denounced the latest recall vote – which failed to oust a single Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) lawmaker – as an undemocratic attempt to “eliminate opposition parties” which make up the majority in the island’s legislature.

Sankei Shimbun, a conservative newspaper, compared Lai with the disgraced Chen Shui-bian, the island’s first DPP president who was mired in corruption scandals. His time in office worsened polarisation at home and antagonism with Beijing. Sound familiar?

Thanks to high tariffs and borderline blackmail on forced investments in the United States, even Japan and South Korea, actual allies of Washington with long-standing formal treaties, are waking up to how unreliable and even threatening Washington has become.

But Lai, who faces the same economic coercion from the US, prefers to double down on provoking Beijing. He now talks about the “purity” of Taiwan, presumably as opposed to the impure mainland, the kind of racial language fitting for a proto-fascist.