DPP, Washington playing dirty shell game: China Daily editorial

Taiwan finally received 2.5 million Moderna COVID-19 vaccine doses on Sunday. Which is good news.

It is to be hoped that more vaccine doses will be acquired from various sources so that Taiwan can achieve herd immunity as soon as possible.

For far too long, the nasty political machinations of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party have taken the 23 million residents on the island hostage, leaving them defenseless in the face of the pandemic. At such a critical juncture, politics must give way to humanitarian concerns, the public's well-being must be the overriding priority.

Just as a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said, it is the DPP authorities that have been preventing the local population from getting vaccine supplies from the Chinese mainland. Instead, they wasted time that has cost lives in order to get the vaccines from the United States.

Commenting on the Sunday shipment of the US donation of vaccines, the spokesperson urged the US side to refrain from interference in China's domestic affairs by means of vaccine aid. But that is highly unlikely given the cynical games the DPP authorities and Washington have been playing.

The US government has blamed the mainland for preventing Taiwan from acquiring the vaccines for political reasons. Yet, especially since the beginning of the latest upsurge in local infections in Taiwan, with multiple domestically developed vaccines approved for emergency use, the mainland has on different occasions offered to provide the island with vaccines that — contrary to the smears of the DPP authorities — have proved safe and effective.

Based on their deep-rooted animosity against the mainland, however, the DPP authorities in Taiwan have created consecutive political obstacles to make it impossible for the mainland to supply vaccines. In addition to ruling out mainland developed vaccines purportedly on safety grounds, despite their use in large-scale inoculation programs without any issues arising, they even rejected the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine being provided via a mainland agent, so as to make every effort to prevent any mainland involvement.

Amid increasing calls for mainland vaccines and dissatisfaction with their politicization, the DPP has been smearing the mainland for "disrupting" its global vaccine procurement endeavors. And they would rather put residents' lives at risk than put aside partisan politics at such a critical moment.

The arrival of the promised US donation will inevitably usher in a fresh round of the hatchet job being done on the mainland, not only by some Washington politicians, but also by some mainland-hating DPP officials in Taiwan. But the death toll on the island due to COVID-19 records the price being paid for their dog and pony show.