Taiwan Photo: Unsplash

Taiwan experienced a power outage across the island without previous warning on Thursday morning, leading to the suspension of water services for millions of residents, the halt of high-speed rails, blackouts in hospitals and other serious incidents such as people being trapped in elevators. Just two days ago when regional leader Tsai Ing-wen met with people in business and commerce circles, she assured them that stable power supply would be maintained. This is the third power outage in Taiwan since the start of the week. No wonder some netizens on the island ridiculed the DPP authority by saying that DPP is "generating electricity with lies." 

Since Tsai took office in 2016, Taiwan has undergone five serious power outages across the island. Blackouts of various sizes are countless. But this time, the power outage came at a particularly "bad" time, as the DPP authority has been busy in recent days to receive Mike Pompeo, as a "distinguished guest from Washington," with drums and gongs. In order to woo the "worst secretary of state in history," Tsai racked her brains, prepared a ceremony to award him a special honor and planned to livestream it on the internet. She has tried to create the momentum for the awarding ceremony on social media platforms, but an unexpected power blackout made her post overwhelmed by netizens' anger, forcing her to cancel the live broadcast. Pompeo was also caught up in traffic confusion caused by the outage.    

The sarcasm of this scene is particularly acid and ironic. The DPP authority has long overlooked the development of people's livelihood on the island. Instead, it has spent a lot of resources on "diplomacy" and "defense," in an attempt to squeeze into the so-called democratic camp of the West by counting on the anti-China forces in the US. However, even before taking a step forward to realize such a goal, it has been stumbled by livelihood issues. This is almost inevitable. On the global stage, the DPP authority has quite often used the "public's will" as a shield to defend their secessionist claims. But what happened on Thursday has clearly shown that the indignation and denouncement expressed under Tsai's welcoming post are the real will of the Taiwan public.       

Taiwan's per capita GDP has exceeded $30,000, but the actual feelings of the residents on the island are quite different from what the figure is supposed to embody. Taiwan has suffered serious water, electricity, land, labor and talent shortages, and the people on the island have been plagued by high-speed rail failures and serious fire incidents caused by aging infrastructure, huge deficit in social welfare, and rapidly rising prices. Now even the basic livelihood materials are often in short supply, and eggs and toilet papers could become the targets of panic buying. In sharp contrast, Shanghai has a population roughly the same size as that of Taiwan with a per capita GDP of $25,000. Although Shanghai's figure is slightly lower than Taiwan's, it's unimaginable that Shanghai will be hit by shortages of supplies, power outages and water cuts that are similar to what Taiwan has repeatedly suffered. 

Taiwan's livelihood guarantee is like a tattered tent, through which the rain and wind drive at will. The fundamental reason is that the DPP authority doesn't take this matter seriously. It is frantically draining the savings of the Taiwan residents accumulated over the past 30 to 40 years. The "defense budget" is twice the "economic expenditure" in the DPP authority's budget of this year. The so-called international friendship the DPP authority is trying to win costs the island dearly. As a result, Taiwan residents could not get the daily necessities they need, but are forced to accept US pork containing ractopamine, Japan food linked to the Fukushima disaster and evaporated milk from Lithuania. In the meantime, the DPP authority has frequently manipulated topics related to "Taiwan independence" to gradually challenge the bottom line of the Chinese mainland, pushing Taiwan to the edge of the "powder keg" step by step. The sense of insecurity is increasing on the island.     

So whenever there is a major power outage on the island, the first reaction of many Taiwan people on social media is "the PLA is coming to attack." This is the result of the DPP authority's hiding the truth from Taiwan people and long-term brainwashing. But it can also make the DPP authority anxious. Taiwan's infrastructure is vulnerable; yet, senior DPP officials still clamor to "fight the mainland to the end," perfectly knowing they are in no position to call for a "fight" at all. This political trickery will become increasingly useless as the problem of people's livelihood becomes more and more serious. Amid the power outage on Thursday, some people on the island said, "Defense strength includes a stable power supply. With a power failure as bad as this, how can [the DPP authority] still dream about fighting others?"

The DPP authority is very good at manipulating politics. It would love to build a "tower" to show its presence on the global stage. But the DPP authority is using the mud and sand from the foundation of that "tower." When its foundation has been completely hollowed, everything will tumble, and the mainland does not even need to make a gentle puff.