Tsai's seasonal gift nothing more than her usual anti-mainland chicanery: China Daily editorial

After failing to get a law approved in October that would target so-called proxies of the Communist Party of China, the "anti-infiltration bill" that Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen is trying to press the island's legislature to pass by Dec 31, although it does not openly single out the Chinese mainland, is undoubtedly another scheme hatched by her Democratic Progressive Party for its secessionist ends.

The coarsely-composed bill consists of 12 short articles, which probably intentionally and vaguely targets "external hostile forces" and "sources of infiltration" for punishment by unspecified law enforcers.

The law to be is therefore intended as a foolproof means for the administrative authority, the Tsai administration for the time being, to abuse its power as a wholesaler of writs to any parties it labels as infiltrators or their accomplices on security grounds.

If the bill, as ill as it is, is endorsed as a law, all individuals and parties engaging in normal exchanges across the Straits will technically become suspected targets of its enforcement.

Which means not only the 5 million Taiwan tourists traveling to the mainland each year, and the more than 1 million Taiwan businesspeople and students who work or study on the mainland, plus their families and friends, but also those who have contacts with the mainland can be arbitrarily put in the crosshairs of the Tsai administration, making it easy for it to silence opponents.

That explains why the bill has invited strong opposition from all sectors of Taiwan society, which are well aware that anything serving the hardcore secessionists will automatically do a disservice to the broad interests of the island.

That Tsai is intent on pushing through the bill in such a hurry, in defiance of the public opposition, shows she knows that if the last window of opportunity before the island's leadership election in January is missed, the DPP might never have another chance to introduce such a bill, and with the law in place, the DPP will be able to further stir up populism to help it garner more support.

If the cross-Straits exchanges continue to deepen and expand again, it will only be a matter of time before Tsai and her like-minded forces have to admit to the disappearing of any social foundation on which to build their cause.

In fact, even if it manages to push the bill into law, if the Tsai administration dares to take advantage of it to blockade interactions across the Straits, it will only worsen cross-Straits ties and accelerate the abandoning of the DPP and its cause by the Taiwan people.