The arbitral tribunal's ruling that Taiping Island, 0.51 square kilometer in area and the largest island in the South China Sea, is a "rock" rather than an "island" sparked public outcries in Taiwan. Sixty-two percent of the people wished Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen could visit the island to demonstrate Taiwan's defiance to the ruling.

The South China Sea issue was not Tsai's priority. So far she has eschewed China's historic rights in the South China Sea and the implications of the dotted line so as to distance herself from the position of the Chinese mainland. But overwhelming public resentment against the ruling gave her no choice but to denounce it as "totally unacceptable".

Tsai's first priority, realistically, is the economy, which depends heavily on the mainland. The poor performance by her predecessor Ma Ying-jeou on the economic front tells why Taiwan residents selected her - for a change. Her second priority is to break the cross-Straits impasse. The mainland insists that exchanges are possible only if she accepts the 1992 Consensus on one China. So far her attitude has been one of studied ambiguity.