All secessionist tricks of Lai are doomed to failure

It is no coincidence that Taiwan leader Lai Ching-te gave a "pro-independence" speech on Thursday, one day before the 20th anniversary of the implementation of the Anti-Secession Law by Beijing. But Lai's extremely provocative speech will only have served to consolidate the mainland's resolve to realize national reunification.

After holding a so-called "high-level national security meeting", Lai once again used inflammatory rhetoric to belligerently claim that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are "nonsubordinate" to each other and that "Taiwan is a sovereign and independent democratic country", while desperately trying to exaggerate the "mainland threat", by going so far as to describe the Chinese mainland as a "foreign hostile force", and put forward what he described as "17 strategies to respond to five threats".

As Chen Binhua, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said in a statement issued on Thursday, the stubbornness of Lai's "pro-independence" stance and the obvious intention of his belligerent speech once again prove that he is an impulsive troublemaker who risks triggering confrontation on the Taiwan question.