Thread by @TheDailyMao

1/ Watch as a purported "journalist" covering East Asia and VP of the Taiwan Foreign Correspondent's Club commits journalistic malpractice on his TL

2/ The article William links has the following block of text. William assumes that most of his audience can't read Chinese so he purposefully mistranslates the text to make China seem like a guilty party in blocking Taiwan's access to COVID vaccines

3/ The text states that Taiwan island's Ministry of Health and Welfare was directly attempting to purchase 5M COVID vaccine doses from BioNTech (和德国BioNTech公司直接洽购500万剂疫苗)...

4/ ...but Minister Chen was worried about external interference in the deal because BioNTech had given sales rights of the COVID vaccine across the Greater China region to a mainland Chinese company (由于德国BioNTech公司将台湾在内的大中华地区代理权都授权给中国的上海复星医药公司)

5/ Note that, in effect, Taiwan island was asking to be excluded from BioNTech's definition of Greater China - a business term which includes mainland China, HK, and TW - and bypass the Chinese intermediary which was BioNTech's sales agent

6/ If BioNTech let Taiwan island's health ministry buy from them directly, they would be violating their own contract with their Chinese sales agent (Fosun) because Greater China includes Taiwan. Taiwan never sought to sign an agreement with BioNTech's agent in Shanghai...

7/ ...nor did Fosun block Taiwan island's attempt to purchase vaccines. This delay in the vaccine purchase was purely because of Taiwan island's attempt to say "we're not a part of Greater China" when the business world has put them there for 30 years in 000s of contracts

8/ Note this was also timed during December 2020. The DPP was asking Germany to signal its agreement that Taiwan island is not a part of Greater China while the EU was negotiating the #CAI with China. TW was hoping to force a wedge issue and derail the broader #CAI

9/ William skips all that and instead tries to make it seem like Fosun is blocking vaccines from reaching Taiwan island, when instead it is Taiwan that is refusing to deal with them as the designated sales agent for Greater China

10/ And before you think "what's the big deal in changing a definition" - remember the term "Greater China" has been used in countless business contracts, so for TW to force a change in that definition would invalidate ALL those agreements, hurting business across the region

11/ And besides missing that point, William also skips over how Taiwan island escalated to blockading German carmakers of TSMC chips to try and armtwist Germany and BioNTech into unilaterally altering their contract

end/ Tsai's regime thinks these antics, combined with sympathetic media coverage, comprise a winning strategy. But off Twitter - where decisions are really made - the regime is viewed as run by children. And more and more important people now want the adults back in charge.