SCMP Editorial

Editorial | Tsai Ing-wen has to put health of Taiwanese first, not her political ambitions

The Taiwan leader’s priorities are all wrong as she shuns offers of help from mainland China to combat the island’s Covid-19 crisis, but accepts vaccines from the US and Japan

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The government of Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen did not act quickly to sign contracts with vaccine makers, so it was unprepared when the island’s first large-scale outbreak began last month. Photo: Handout

SCMP Editorial

Published: 11:36pm, 8 Jun 2021Updated: 11:35pm, 8 Jun 2021

There is no place for politics where health is concerned. Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen’s repeated shunning of offers from the mainland to help control the island’s Covid-19 crisis and instead accepting vaccines from Washington and Tokyo proves her priorities are wrong.

Lives are at risk and with no let-up in deaths and infections, time is of the essence. Preventing outbreaks and immunising people, not point-scoring, is the most important consideration.

The United States and Japan are no different in their approach. Three American senators who visited Taiwan on Sunday to announce Washington’s donation of 750,000 vaccine shots arrived on board a US Air Force transport plane from South Korea.

In keeping with Washington’s acknowledgement that there is only one China, such military flights are unusual, the last being on an earthquake relief mission in 1999. But relations between Washington and Beijing have since soured and President Joe Biden’s administration is seemingly going out of its way to provoke; Beijing’s lodging of solemn representation with the US was to be expected.

02:46

Cross-strait politics get in the way of Taiwan’s desperate need for Covid-19 vaccines

As Washington’s staunchest ally in East Asia, Tokyo’s gift of 1.24 million vaccine doses delivered on Friday also angered Chinese officials.