Editor’s note: In light of the so-called “10 lectures on unity” by Taiwan leader Lai Ching-te, CGTN presents a 10-episode commentary series “resurfacing old dregs of ‘Taiwan Independence’ rhetoric: a rebuttal to Lai Ching-te’s lectures.” This is the first piece in the series.

Taiwan leader Lai Ching-te is giving his new campaign for “Taiwan independence” a deceiving name: “10 lectures on unity.” He kicked off this new campaign over the weekend, with each lecture focusing on a specific theme.

The first speech was made two days after Taiwan’s election commission announced a recall vote, scheduled for July 26th, targeting 20 plus legislators of the Chinese Kuomintang; thus it was taking advantage of a major publicity window leading up to the vote. The timing of the first speech made it all the more obvious that the ultimate purpose of Lai’s new campaign is to sell the “Taiwan independence” agenda of the Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, rally support behind such an agenda and purge those who are against it.

The speech, under the disguising theme of “country,” is full of hollowness, lies and fallacies. In an attempt to create fabricated grounds for the “independence” narrative, Lai deliberately distorted and fragmented history. He disregarded the fact that successive Chinese governments have governed the island and ignored how people from both Taiwan and the mainland have fought together to resist foreign aggression and achieve Taiwan’s return to the motherland. The speech was a sad betrayal of the patriotic legacy and the historic sacrifices of Taiwan people.

The speech was also a blatant trampling on the victory of World War II by Allied powers and an open challenge to international law.

Lai, in the speech, made no mention of two key internationally binding documents: the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation, which reaffirmed China’s sovereignty over Taiwan. Instead, it cited the so-called Treaty of San Francisco in 1951, which was not even recognized by China because the San Francisco Peace Conference in September 1951 was convened without the participation of the PRC, the sole legal government of China since 1949, thus breaching the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

Lai in the speech also willfully misinterpreted UNGA Resolution 2758 in 1971 and claimed that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are "not subordinate to each other." He intended to create a narrative that the Resolution has nothing related to Taiwan; but the truth is the Resolution did not mention Taiwan simply because it dealt with the question of which government is the legitimate representative of China — Taiwan included — to the United Nations.

A May public opinion poll by the United Daily News in Taiwan showed 53 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with Lai’s governance, compared with 37 percent who expressed satisfaction. That was the highest dissatisfaction level for an island leader nearing their first anniversary in recent years.

In his speech Lai ignored such incompetency of the DPP. Rather than addressing the daily life issues that are on the minds of the Taiwan people, he resorted to empty talk to push for his dangerous political agenda. He did not talk about Taiwan’s housing prices, almost the most overpriced in Asia; nor did he mention the island’s shortages of energy, and its struggle with blackouts during heat waves and droughts in recent years. As the leader of the island, he is simply out of touch with the public. His so-called “10 lectures on unity” are not uniting people; they are sowing division.

By starting this new campaign, Lai Ching-te and the DPP are placing Taiwan in peril for their own political gains. They are the real danger for Taiwan.

(Liu Kun is a commentator with CGTN. If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com. Follow @thouse_opinions?on Twitter to discover the latest commentaries in the CGTN Opinion Section.)