Taiwan's team was eliminated from the World Baseball Classic preliminaries. That should have been the story. Instead, Premier Cho Jung-tai's (卓榮泰) brief trip to Tokyo to watch the games in person has generated a political controversy lasting over 48 hours — with critics demanding receipts proving he paid his own way, supporters framing it as a diplomatic breakthrough, and baseball fans caught in the crossfire. A simple weekend outing became a political circus, and the Premier has only himself to blame for letting it get there.
The Diplomatic Framing Was a Mistake
There is nothing wrong with a premier attending a baseball game on the weekend. The problem was the framing. Billing a five-hour Tokyo dash as a 'diplomatic breakthrough' invited scrutiny it could not survive. While fans were cheering for the national team, they were simultaneously dragged into arguments over whether the trip was publicly or privately funded — and whether it constituted official business or personal travel. That is absurd. The players should have been the story.
To be fair, Taiwan-Japan relations have genuinely warmed under DPP governance. High-level Taiwanese officials visiting Japan remains rare since the severing of formal ties, but it does happen: former Vice President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) attended Abe Shinzo's funeral in 2022; then-Deputy Premier Zheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦)quietly met key Liberal Democratic Party figures including Aso Taro in 2023; former minister Lin Chia-lung appeared alongside current Prime Minister Kishida at the Osaka-Kansai Expo last year. Cho's visit, as sitting premier, could have been seen as one more incremental step in that pattern — a quiet bonus, not a headline event.
The timing made the framing worse. Japanese Prime Minister Kishida had just canceled his ceremonial first pitch at the WBC. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung convened an emergency economic meeting to announce oil price caps in response to Middle East tensions. Against that backdrop, a premier flying to Tokyo to watch baseball — and calling it diplomacy — looked tone-deaf.
The Songshan Airport Problem Is the Real Story
The trip's most serious problem is procedural, and it deserves more attention than the expense question. Cho departed on a China Airlines private charter from Songshan Airport's military base (松指部). That single fact unravels the 'private trip' framing entirely.
Commercial charter flights are presidential-level protocol in Taiwan. Using that arrangement for what was declared a private premier's trip creates excessive ceremony at minimum, and potentially puts the Defense Ministry, Transportation Ministry, and China Airlines in regulatory jeopardy. A private trip — even one involving a charter flight — cannot legitimately depart from a military installation. The large security detail accompanying Cho compounds the problem. Either the Premier knowingly used special privileges, or he did not realize he was using them. Neither is a good answer.
Adding to the confusion, Oceans Affairs Council Chairwoman Kuan Bi-ling posted on Facebook that the trip was 'definitely official business, naturally involving meetings with Japanese political figures' — only for Cho himself to clarify it was purely private, and Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Kihara Minoru to publicly confirm 'no contact with political figures.' A cabinet that cannot agree on whether a trip is official or private has a coordination problem.
Diplomatic Optics Don't Build Political Capital
Supporters point to a long tradition of creative Taiwan diplomacy: Lee Teng-hui's '(李登輝) vacation diplomacy,' Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁)'transit diplomacy,' various foreign dignitaries visiting Taipei during the Tsai years. These efforts achieved some results. But looking back honestly, most produced more symbolism than substance. The diplomatic achievements with real lasting impact — visa-free access to over 100 countries under Ma Ying-jeou, for instance — came through patient institutional work, not high-profile gambits.
More fundamentally, foreign trips do not build domestic approval ratings — for presidents or premiers. Taiwan has been a democracy for nearly four decades, and its most popular leader in that period remains Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), whose last overseas trip was taken as vice premier. After becoming premier, he traveled extensively to Taiwan's outer islands and military posts but never went abroad again. The public can sense whether an official's attention is truly on them.
Cho is unlikely to be the next Chiang Ching-kuo. But after nearly two years as premier — marked by escalating confrontations with the legislature, refusal to countersign certain laws, and a passive approach to stalled NCC appointments — he has yet to demonstrate either independent political judgment or the cross-party communication skills the role demands. A charter flight to Tokyo for baseball cannot compensate for that deficit. Paying his own expenses is damage control, not leadership.
The baseball trip was not a scandal. But it was a miscalculation — one that reveals a government system that has lost its compass on the basic question of what a premier is for.
