Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party has taken a tougher confrontational stance towards the Chinese mainland. The DPP banned shipments of surgical masks to the mainland and insisted on terming the disease "Wuhan pneumonia", while senior officials in Taiwan repeatedly blamed the mainland's epidemic prevention policies and organized cyberattacks against the World Health Organization and Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

As the ruling party, the DPP showed hostility towards the mainland by taking advantage of the coronavirus outbreak and exposed its true intentions for "Taiwan independence".

By doing so, the DPP achieved its goal of inciting an "anti-mainland" populist frenzy. According to a poll published on March 30, positive opinion towards the DPP has edged up, to 54.9 percent. However, populism is always irrational and capricious, and manipulating populism has always been a dangerous game. While the DPP relies on populism to stir up cross-Straits antagonism, it has also invited great political risks.

On the mainland, there is a consensus that the DPP is taking advantage of some people’s misunderstanding about the mainland. Some pro-independence media and the "cyber army" launched unprecedented attacks and smearing campaign against the mainland, resulting in an “anti-mainland” populist upsurge rarely seen in the past 70 years in Taiwan. As the ruling party, the DPP showed hostility towards the mainland by taking advantage of the coronavirus outbreak and exposed its true intentions for "Taiwan independence".

However, people who pursue peace, friendship and mutual assistance on both sides of the Taiwan Straits do not disappear in a vacuum. Just like the "spiral of silence" theory, the voices that are sympathetic and objective to the mainland in Taiwan are only temporarily silent under the suppression and bullying by political power. They however cannot be buried forever. When the epidemic is brought under control and the mainland resumes work and production, public opinions in Taiwan may completely reverse, the DPP would find itself in a situation of holding a wolf by the ears.

Facts have proved that the DPP authorities have miscalculated the situation by siding with the United States against the mainland, fanning the anti-mainland atmosphere and encouraging people to find pleasure in schadenfreude. The DPP thought that Western countries would block China due to the coronavirus epidemic, and therefore took the lead in following the US to criticize the mainland’s epidemic prevention policy.

When the US became the world's center of the pandemic, the DPP authorities would find themselves caught in a dilemma whether to continue to follow US steps by ignoring facts or recognize and learn from the mainland's epidemic prevention experience. 

As the situation in Taiwan worsened and American data showed continued rise in COVID-19 infections and deaths, resistance to DPP’s pro-US policies also grew. At the beginning of April, the DPP authorities donated 2 million masks to the US, stirring an outcry on the island. The public asked: why did the authorities donate the valuable medical protection materials to the US when the island itself was facing a challenging situation in epidemic prevention and control? And when the public in Taiwan began to doubt the US’ competence in pandemic control, the DPP authorities could no longer play the "epidemic card" against the mainland.

Shortly after the novel coronavirus outbreak, the DPP administration quickly suspended the flows of people across the Taiwan Straits, which might have helped reduce infection cases in the island. But as the disease spread around the world, Taiwan, an export-oriented economy, could not stay clear of the impact of the pandemic and began to feel the pinch as its exports remained blocked. 

This is a global pandemic, and no country or region has the ability to stay immune from it. Concerted action under the coordination and cooperation of the World Health Organization and other global organizations is the long-term solution. Without help and cooperation from the mainland, Taiwan will inevitably remain isolated from the process of international and regional cooperation in pandemic prevention and control. And with the global pandemic continuing, its impact on Taiwan's economy would also grow and calls for relaxing controls on population movements would also become louder. If Taiwan's economic situation continues to deteriorate or the island registers explosive increase in infection cases due to the resumption of work and production, the Taiwan authorities would have to seek help and assistance from the mainland to tide over the difficulty when the US is unable or unwilling to help. This is a question for the DPP to ponder.

The writer is a scholar from the Taiwan Research Institute at Sun Yat-sen University.