As Taiwan’s Election Nears, Candidates Take a Careful Stance on China

How serious is Chinese President Xi Jinping about his vow to take over the island province of Taiwan, which has not been under mainland control since the Japanese defeated the rotting Qing dynasty in 1895? Taiwanese, never so averse to Japanese rule as the Koreans, who fell to Japan 15 years later, did not care for the mainlanders lording it over them.

With a presidential election coming up in Taiwan on Jan. 13, the issue of Taiwan’s independence is as important now as it ever has been since Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek led his defeated army to the island redoubt 90 miles across the Formosa Straits while Mao Zedong’s Red Army was conquering the mainland in 1949. 

Taiwan’s presidential candidates agree that Taiwan theoretically should remain a Chinese province. At issue is the degree to which they agree.

The sense is that Xi, beset by economic problems bubbling up all over China and purging his armed forces of “corrupted” elements, is not going to go beyond rhetorical vows to “recover” the lost province unless Taiwan declares itself an independent nation. Formally, Taiwan is still the “Republic of China,” the name from the pre-communist era, but Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, nearing the end of her second four-year term, has carefully avoided giving any impression that she might declare Taiwan’s independence.

Her vice president, Lai Ching-te, to whom Tsai relinquished leadership of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) after a poor showing in local elections in 2022, takes a different view. He has thoroughly upset Beijing by dwelling on Taiwan “sovereignty” after having spoken of the need to “uphold democracy and freedom” against “authoritarian forces and return to the old path of 'One China.’”

Lai, a medical doctor with a degree in public health from Harvard, has pulled back from implying, if not stating outright, that Taiwan should call itself a sovereign nation independent of China. Rather than almost invite Chinese invasion, he now is following Tsai’s lead and advocating “the status quo.” Still anathema to the mandarins of the mainland, he professes to be open to dialog with them. While demanding respect for Taiwan’s “sovereignty,” he has stopped baiting Beijing by talking of “independence.”

That’s in line with the impression that as long as Taiwan does not declare itself a nation-state, China won’t go beyond rhetorical threats and the air and naval exercises that it has been conducting ever since Nancy Pelosi, as speaker of the House of Representatives, led a congressional delegation to Taipei in August 2022.

Beijing, however, would vastly prefer Hou You-yi, candidate of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), the Nationalist Party that fled the mainland in 1949. Historically the enemy of the Chinese Communist Party, the KMT under Hou, the mayor of New Taipei City, wants to foster great relations with Beijing in the interests of commerce and common sense.

Indeed, why risk a war that would jeopardize the peace and prosperity of the island’s 23 million people? Taiwan ranks as the world’s largest producer of semiconductors, and mainland China ranks as the island’s biggest trading partner. War would ruin a relationship from which both sides have profited immensely.

Lai is still expected to win, but Hou and a third candidate, Ko Wen-je, like Lai a medical doctor, may between them capture more than half the votes. Ko, the candidate of his own Taiwan People’s Party, is running well behind but he preaches a moderate line that’s likely to draw votes from both the ruling party and its KMT challenger. With no run-off election in the event of a plurality, rather than a majority, for the front-runner, Lai faces the prospect of governing as a minority winner.

The degree of support for Hou and Ko is surprising, considering that most of Taiwan’s voters are Taiwanese — that is, their ancestors emigrated from the mainland in the centuries before Japanese rule. More than a million more mainlanders, both soldiers and civilians, arrived as Chiang’s army was losing to the communists. The KMT perpetuated its power over Taiwan in bloody purges in which thousands died, but in 1987, martial law was lifted long after Chiang’s death in 1975 and President Jimmy Carter’s decision in 1979 to recognize the government of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing rather than that of the Republic of China in Taipei.

The Democratic Progressive Party and the KMT, dominated by the children, grandchildren and now great-grandchildren of the original KMT, have been duking it out ever since. The DPP’s Chen Shui-bian was elected president in 2000, but the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou ruled for eight years before Tsai took over for the DPP. By no means do all Taiwanese support the DPP. Many who are business-minded, going along to get along, consider cooperation with Beijing to be an absolute necessity. Under those circumstances, Lai, if elected, may not have the support to stand too tough against mainland bullying.

From the U.S. viewpoint, it’s possible to see advantages and disadvantages to a DPP versus a KMT victory. Presumably, cross-Straits tensions would ease if Hou were elected. Then again, would Xi expect some kind of deal for eventual peaceful “reunification,” which most of the people in Tawan still would not like?

What would become of America’s “commitment” to defend Taiwan in a showdown with China? How about Beijing’s demands that Taiwan stop importing American arms? Also, what about top-secret American wizardry in high-tech products made in Taiwan and exported to China?

Officially, Washington is not taking sides. “I don’t talk about politics” was the response of the American ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, when I asked him about the election after he had just given a talk at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

In his talk, however, Burns left no doubt he agreed with all the candidates on the issue of Taiwan’s independence. “The status quo of the past seven decades has kept the peace,” he said. “We hope very much we will see a peaceful resolution on both sides.” 

Donald Kirk has been a journalist for more than 60 years, covering conflict in Asia and the Middle East. Now a freelance correspondent covering North and South Korea, he is the author of several books about Asian affairs.