William Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was elected Taiwan’s new president on Sunday.
“I want to thank the Taiwanese for writing a new chapter in our democracy,” Lai, who won 40% of the vote (with a 71.86% voter turnout), said during his victory speech. “We are telling the international community that between democracy and authoritarianism, we will stand on the side of democracy.”
Apart from an indirect reference to Beijing, during Lai’s speech, little mention was made of Taiwan’s strained relations with China, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which seeks to conquer the island.
Through Lai’s win, the pro-Taiwan independence DPP reached an important milestone. For the first time since direct presidential elections were introduced in Taiwan, it has now won three terms in a row. The new president and vice president will take office on May 20th.
The development—though not wholly unexpected—raised Beijing’s hackles. The Communist government there views the staunchly pro-Taiwan independence figure and his DPP party as ‘separatist’ forces and a threat to their hopes of incorporating Taiwan, the world’s largest producer of semiconductors by far, into the People’s Republic.
Taiwan has been politically separate from the Chinese mainland since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, when the defeated Nationalist government fled to the island. The Chinese Communist Party took control of the mainland and proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. It has sought to conquer the island ever since, terming this “reunification”.
The island is politically divided between those who still see it as part of a greater China and hope one day to join the mainland again—albeit not under communist rule—and those who seek “independence”, meaning pursuing a distinct Taiwanese identity.
The Taiwanese people’s clear rebuke of China, as it continues to be expressed by democratic means, in no way appears to sway the current regime in Beijing, whose president, Xi Jinping, has made the matter of taking Taiwan crucial to his legacy.
The CCP deems the Republic of China, as Taiwan is officially called, as a renegade province and claims the territory as its own, and has never denied it would resort to military means to achieve that aim.
In the run-up to the elections, China employed various scare tactics in an attempt to bully the Taiwanese people into submission.
Beijing’s response to Lai’s election was predictable. When asked about the results, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said: “Whatever changes take place in Taiwan, the basic fact that there is only one China in the world and Taiwan is part of China will not change.”
Similarly, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said Lai’s win would not alter bilateral relations in any way. In a statement carried on China’s state Xinhua news agency, Chen Binhua, a spokesperson for the office, claimed the results showed the Democratic Progressive Party cannot represent mainstream public opinion on the island.
By this, he was referring to the fact that, while the DPP won the presidency, during that same election it lost its majority in parliament, where its close rival, the more Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) party, won 52 of the 113 seats, one more than the DPP.
In the months ahead, Beijing is expected to dial up its efforts to intimidate Taiwan through its usual tactics, such as military and psychological harassment, as well as economic pressure.
Following the election, the U.S. State Department published a press release in which it congratulated Lai and the Taiwanese people “for once again demonstrating the strength of their robust democratic system and electoral process,” and said Washington looked forward to furthering its unofficial relationship with Taiwan.
“The partnership between the American people and the people on Taiwan,” it went on, “rooted in democratic values, continues to broaden and deepen across economic, cultural, and people-to-people ties.”
In a separate statement, U.S. President Joe Biden reiterated his country’s official stance, in that it does not support the independence of Taiwan.
Beijing does not buy Washington’s narrative, however, as its response came swiftly.
Its foreign ministry lambasted Washington for sending a “gravely wrong signal to the “Taiwan independence” separatist forces.” Its stance, it added, “seriously” violated the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiqués, as it goes “against the U.S.’ own political commitment to maintaining only cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.”
It called on Washington to not seek to “use the Taiwan question as a tool to contain China,” as it urged it to “stop interactions of an official nature with Taiwan.”
With Taiwan serving as an increasingly possible flashpoint, open conflict in the Pacific between the U.S. and China—both unlikely to budge—remains an uncomfortable prospect.
