On the eve of President Lai Ching-te (賴清德)'s planned visit to Eswatini, the trip was suddenly called off. Since taking office, Lai has been barred from transiting through the continental United States, and now he can't even arrange a direct flight to one of Taiwan's last remaining African allies. At the very same moment, the KMT chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) was returning from Beijing with a ten-point package of economic concessions in hand. So when the ruling party tried to play the sympathy card over Lai's travel woes, Beijing's goodie bag rather undercut the drama.
Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party is facing a growing political problem — and for once, it isn't coming from Beijing. It's coming from the government's own response to Beijing. When the KMT chairwoman returned from her meeting with Xi Jinping (習近平) bearing a ten-point package of economic incentives for Taiwan, the Lai administration's knee-jerk rejection handed the opposition a ready-made campaign issue — while doing nothing to ease the economic pain that ordinary Taiwanese have been quietly absorbing for years.
The timing made things worse. President Lai's aborted trip to Eswatini, blamed on Beijing's behind-the-scenes pressure on transit countries, was meant to generate sympathy. Instead, it collided awkwardly with Beijing, which simultaneously offered expanded tourism access, resumed direct flights, and relaxed agricultural trade rules. It's hard to cast yourself as the victim of a bully who is, at the same time, offering your struggling industries a lifeline. The "we're under siege" narrative lost its footing.
A Decade of Empty Tour Buses
Taiwan's tourism industry has endured what can only be called a lost decade. When the DPP first came to power in 2016, over 4.18 million mainland Chinese visitors arrived annually — a historic peak. That number fell steadily in the years that followed, and by the time the pandemic hit, it had nearly reached zero. The collapse wiped out an entire ecosystem: tour bus operators, hotels, and specialty shops built around mainland visitors. Rows of idle coaches became the industry's most visible symbol of despair.
The government's New Southbound Policy, intended to replace mainland tourists with visitors from Southeast Asia, never filled the gap. Southeast Asian travelers spend less and stay for shorter periods. Meanwhile, Taiwanese are heading abroad in droves — Japan, in particular, has become a near-obsession — while inbound tourism has recovered at a crawl. The result is a persistent and widening tourism deficit, made worse by a domestic travel market that many Taiwanese regard as poor value for money.
Into this bleak picture came Beijing's ten-point package — a set of proposals that, for Taiwan's battered hospitality and tourism sectors, felt like the first real rain after a long drought. The Mainland Affairs Council's initial reaction suggested the government might at least take a proper look. Within two hours, that position evaporated. The Council issued a statement saying there was "no immediate need" to resume direct flights, and that actual market demand was "not as high as people imagine."
Beijing's Economic Package and the Government's Response
The claim drew a sharp response from the industries most directly affected. The Taiwan National Federation of Industries convened representatives from seven trade associations — covering travel agencies, hotels, food producers, confectionery makers, fruit exporters, and tour bus operators — for a press conference calling on the government not to "stand in opposition to industry and the people." It was a direct and public rebuke.
Before the press conference even took place, the Mainland Affairs Council had already moved to discredit it. Officials labeled the business groups' advocacy as a Beijing-orchestrated influence operation — framing it as political infiltration, election interference, and a tool of pressure against the government. The suggestion that the Anti-Infiltration Act might be invoked was left pointedly in the air. What this revealed was a government that responds to inconvenient economic voices not with policy debate, but with political intimidation.
The Council then spent two consecutive days urging industry associations not to be "used" by Beijing and to avoid becoming instruments of pressure against the government — while in the same breath calling on those same groups to "stand with the government" and push Beijing to resume official negotiations. The contradiction was glaring. Mobilizing business groups to advance the government's own diplomatic agenda is apparently not "using commerce to pressure politics" — even when that is precisely what the government accuses everyone else of doing.
"Poisoned Candy" That Everyone Keeps Eating
The Federation's chairman Hsu Shu-bo (許舒博) later revealed a telling detail: his organization had received no pressure from Beijing before the press conference — but it had received a phone call from the Taiwan government. The Mainland Affairs Council minister confirmed the call, but insisted it was an act of "concern," not pressure. In a functioning democracy, that distinction is difficult to sustain.
The Lai administration has labeled Beijing's economic package "annexation poison" — an echo of former President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)'s warning that the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) was a "candy-coated poison pill." Tsai then governed for eight years under that very framework without withdrawing from it. The rhetorical alarm was never matched by policy action, and ordinary Taiwanese kept right on benefiting from the arrangement. At the time, one DPP supporter offered an inadvertently candid defense: "I'll just eat the candy coating and not swallow the poison."
That framing is becoming harder to sustain politically. DPP politicians outside Taipei are no longer uniformly on message. Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧), a DPP candidate for New Taipei City mayor, has publicly called for less confrontation and more positive cross-strait exchange. Tainan mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) has said mainland visitors are welcome, so long as they come with goodwill. These are not opposition voices — they are DPP figures reading their own constituents.
The administration's standard line — that anyone supporting cross-strait engagement is effectively a fellow traveler of the Chinese Communist Party — is also running into logical limits. By that standard, the seven trade associations are now CCP collaborators. And so, presumably, is U.S. President Donald Trump, who has expressed admiration for Xi Jinping's leadership style and reportedly told Xi he could "handle Tsai Ing-wen." At some point, a category that contains everyone ceases to mean anything.
When the People on Your Boat Become Your Enemy
Taiwan's broader economic picture sharpens the political risk. Growth is increasingly concentrated in AI and semiconductors — TSMC's U.S. expansion dominates the financial headlines — while traditional industries quietly fall below the line of viability. Tour bus operators and hoteliers are not benefiting from the chip boom. The Lai administration's decision to frame their concerns as a Beijing influence operation does not solve their problems. It simply tells them that their suffering is politically inconvenient.
There is an old Chinese counsel worth recalling here. During the Warring States period, the ruler of Wei surveyed his kingdom from a boat on the Yellow River and declared its mountains and rivers a great natural treasure and an unassailable defense. His advisor Wu Qi (吳起) gently corrected him: the security of a state rests on the virtue of its ruler, not the strength of its geography. If the ruler neglects the welfare of those around him, the very people traveling with him will become his enemies.
Taiwan's security posture — its resistance to infiltration, its wariness of cross-strait engagement — reflects real and legitimate concerns. But a government that treats its own business community as an enemy formation has mistaken the source of its vulnerability.
Taiwan's public appetite for a more stable and mutually beneficial cross-strait relationship is, by most available evidence, considerably greater than the DPP's current stance acknowledges. If the party continues to treat every business voice calling for engagement as a vector of Beijing's influence — and every industry group as a potential target for the Anti-Infiltration Act — it should not be surprised when voters deliver a sharp verdict in this year's local elections.
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