Mainland China has been rumored to punish "two-sided” Taiwanese business people as early as 2018. Spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian of the Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) of the State Council stated that the mainland is taking a first hit against Taiwan’s Far Eastern Group recently "based on facts" and implementing “precision strikes." The expected aim was to ask Taiwanese business people at large to distinguish between right and wrong, take a firm stand, and draw a clear line with the separatist forces of Taiwan independence. According to the TAO, there is no room for ambiguity. But can the mainland's measures achieve its goal? Will the accidentally derived political, economic, and social effects worsen the estrangement between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, and thus are even more detrimental to the peaceful development of cross-strait relations?

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Recently, I read in Forbes a listing of the richest billionaires in 2021 in terms of net worth. This year, 2,755 individuals made the list, the largest number in history. The number of people from mainland China and Hong Kong is 698, while 47 people come from Taiwan. It shows the growing and declining of the economic strength of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, and the progress of the mainland cannot be ignored.

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During office hours, Vice Premier Shen Jong-chin participated in a businessmen's meeting organized by the Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC), a state-owned enterprise in Taiwan, drumming up support for the government's position on the four-question referendum which deal with referendum dates, pork imports, algal reef protection and nuclear energy. Though Vice Premier Shen undermined administrative neutrality, President Tsai Ing-wen called it "executive bodies as a whole". In addition, Premier Su Tseng-chang followed suit by saying that it was "perfectly justified". Moreover, Chairman Lee Chin-yung of the Central Election Commission (CEC) indicated that the Executive Yuan is the “opposed party” in the four-question referendum, so there was no such thing as breach of administrative neutrality. Deputy Minister of Justice Tsai Pi-chun said it was a dereliction of duty for a political appointee not to speak up when he or she should. It was also a wonder in a democracy that the Tsai administration have deliberately blurred the line between political and administrative responsibilities, treating administrative neutrality as if it were nothing.

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