How far will Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen go in her endeavors to estrange the island from the mainland? No one seems to be able to tell from what she has said. But everyone can see where her government is trying to lead the island when it comes to relations across the Taiwan Straits.

What has happened since she took over the leadership of the island points to what her refusal to clarify her attitude on the 1992 Consensus portends - trying to do as much as she and her administration can toward a de facto "Taiwan independence".

When 24 tourists from the mainland were killed in a bus fire in Taiwan on July 19, Tsai as leader of the island, which has benefitted greatly from a large number of tourists from across the Straits, did not say a word about the perished tourists. Instead, she said elegiac words about the Taiwan tourist guide who was also killed in the tragedy.