A fresh war of words has broken out between Taiwan's Blue and Green camps, this time over exactly whom a commentary in *The Economist* was criticising — an unfavourable story for the Kuomintang's Chen Yi-hsin.

• *The Economist* published a commentary titled "Holding Taiwan's democracy hostage," and Chen Yi-hsin, head of the KMT's Culture and Communications Committee, said it was criticising President Lai Ching-te for being "stubborn" and holding Taiwan's democracy hostage.
• The article's author, David Rennie, personally came forward to clarify, saying the piece's main point was to criticise the KMT-led opposition parties as the ones actually paralysing democracy.
• Chen Yi-hsin refused to admit any error, and instead used the "chronological order" of the author's post as his justification, claiming that he had cited the article first and the author had clarified only afterwards.
• Shen Jung-chin, an associate professor at York University in Canada, sharply criticised this as "calling a deer a horse," questioning how Chen Yi-hsin, who holds a PhD in economics from the University of London, could fail to understand the original English text.

Outlook: This battle over interpretation is unlikely to reach a conclusion any time soon, and the Blue camp may have to keep bearing the pressure over the commentary's stance.