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CCampaigning is intensifying in Taiwan ahead of Saturday’s presidential election, with results far from the shores of the self-governing island of 23 million people, which Beijing claims sovereignty over and has repeatedly threatened to invade. It seems like it will resonate far and wide.
As the three candidates enter the final stages and the race remains close, each candidate is holding rambunctious street rallies to energize their support base while trying to appeal to younger voters through vitriolic social media posts. The last polls allowed before the vote show that the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), led by China-skeptical Vice President William Lai, is ahead of the more pro-China Kuomintang (Kuomintang) and the emerging centrist Taiwanese Party (DP). It has a slight lead over the People’s Party (TPP). )3rd place.
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In the run-up to the January 13 vote, relations with China dominate the discussion. A Chinese satellite launch that flew over southern Taiwan on Tuesday triggered a bilingual air raid warning that blared over loudspeakers and rang on every cell phone at around 3:15 p.m. local time. . However, the English version of the warning mistranslated “satellite” as “missile,” and opposition politicians accused the Democratic Progressive Party government of intentionally stirring up public anxiety in order to boost its own approval ratings. (The government claims it was an honest mistake.)
Indeed, Saturday’s vote will set the tone for Straits relations for at least the next four years. During the past two terms of the DPP government, relations between Taipei and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) soured significantly, with Lai branded a “troublemaker” and his election “only posing the risk of a violent war”. . Lai’s rivals, the Kuomintang Party and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, both argue that cautious re-engagement with Beijing will ultimately protect Taiwan’s de facto independence.
Although China’s Qing Dynasty set up camp in a part of Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party never ruled Taiwan.Taiwan was administered as a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945, and politics changed with the end of the civil war in 1949. established autonomy. In his New Year’s speech on December 31, Xi Jinping warned Taiwanese voters that “unification” was a “historical necessity.”
Taiwan’s status remains the most vexing issue among the myriad disputes that define relations between the world’s superpowers today. As recently as last month, the United States was obligated by Congressional law to sell about $300 million worth of Taiwanese weapons, including tactical communications equipment, for its own defense. President Joe Biden has vowed four times to protect Taiwan from Chinese military aggression, but in November, in San Francisco, President Xi told Biden, “China will achieve unification. I can’t do it,” he said.
read more: Biden calls Xi a ‘dictator’ shortly after praising progress in repairing US-China relations
The future of the island is also a matter of global concern, given its critical importance in supply chains. Taiwan is the world’s 16th largest trading economy, with $907 billion in goods and services exchanged in 2022, and produces 90% of the world’s advanced semiconductor chips, which are essential to virtually every industry. There is. The Rhodium Group estimates that a blockade of Taiwan would put more than $2 trillion in economic activity at risk, even before sanctions or military response. Meanwhile, Bloomberg Economics estimates that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan that draws the United States into war would cost the global economy $10 trillion.
However, Taiwan’s domestic growth rate in 2023 will be just 1.4%, the slowest pace in eight years, and voters hope to improve their livelihoods, which have suffered due to Chinese boycotts and sanctions during the last eight years of the Democratic Progressive Party government. I’m paying more and more attention to this. According to Capital Economics, simply lifting the Chinese government’s ban on Chinese tourists would boost Taiwan’s GDP by more than 1%. Anti-incumbentism is also a force worth noting. No political party in Taiwan has won three consecutive terms since democratization in the late 1980s.
“In a democracy, when one party is in power for a period of time, it faces fatigue and frustration, and the urge to give someone else a chance to see what they can do. ” said East Asia expert Sherry Riger. He attended Davidson College in North Carolina and is the author of the following books: Why is Taiwan important?.
In the 2020 election, outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen turned around her dismal approval ratings, largely because she capitalized on Taiwan’s backlash against Beijing’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in the semi-autonomous region of Hong Kong. This time, however, the Chinese government’s message was more nuanced. In March, Ma Ying-jeou, the last Kuomintang president of Taiwan, visited China on a goodwill visit, the first by a current or former Taiwanese leader since the civil war, to persuade Taiwanese voters to improve relations. He suggested that there was a way. Exists.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Progressive Party desperately insists that China’s territorial plans remain unabated and even extend beyond the islands. “China is actively engaged in authoritarian expansionism,” Lai told TIME in an exclusive interview in late October. “China is a regional hegemon and continues to expand its influence with ambitions to annex Taiwan and break through the first island chain,” it added. He mentioned the important island chain. And Indonesia.
read more: ‘The best way to maintain peace is to go to war’: Taiwan’s foreign minister resists Chinese aggression
Ultimately, the goal of the Taiwanese people is clear. It is about improving livelihoods while preserving the island’s precious democratic way of life. Saturday’s election will depend on which candidates voters believe have the plan and the aptitude to actually make it happen.
“A lot of people in Taiwan are pretty nervous about what’s at stake in cross-Strait relations,” Riger said.. “They don’t want to become the next Ukraine or the next Gaza, so the idea that there might be a leader who can actually talk to the other side and lower the temperature certainly has supporters. There is.”
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