Taiwan elects new president

Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate and vice-president, William Lai Ching-te, won the presidential election held on Saturday. It is for the third time that DPP has captured the presidency. Taiwan’s election drew attention because China claims it to be part of the mainland, while DPP stands for its independence.

Lai is open to qualified talks with China and following his party’s policy is keen on strengthening the islands’ defences. The United States supports the Taiwanese government, and Washington’s stance is that Taiwan should choose to merge with China voluntarily, and that it should be not be forced to do so, especially military force. Taiwan Strait, which divides Taiwan from China, is one of the sensitive hotspots in the world.

Lai garnered 40 per cent of the vote. His rivals, Kuomintang’s Hou Yu-ih and former Taipei mayor from Taiwan People’s Party, Ko Wen-je, conceded defeat. The TPP was founded in 2019. Lai in his victory speech said, “I want to thank the Taiwanese people for writing a new chapter in our democracy. We are telling the international community that between democracy and authoritarianism, we will stand on the side of democracy.”

The United States has been supporting the Taiwanese cause, and Washington has been supplying arms to the island-nation. It is assumed that US’ allies like Japan and others in the region are to defend Taiwan if it were to face a military threat. The Taiwan issue is the most contested issue in the US-China relations. China has been reiterating time and again that Taiwan is an integral part of China.

The relations between Taiwan and China are complex. When China’s economic reforms were ushered in the 1970s by Deng Xiaoping, the investments into China came from Taiwan. Taiwan has been the booster for Chinese markets. Taiwan has also developed its own economic ad technological strengths, especially in computer hardware. It had become the chief source for global hardware, and it has established itself as an important part of the supply chain.

There is recognition of the important role played by China as it became the economic powerhouse, second only to the United States. This has benefited Taiwan too because it has suddenly found a huge market next door for its exports. Given the economic ties of the two, it will be difficult for any of them to precipitate a crisis. Taiwan and China are important for each other.

Many of the politicians in the US, harking back to the Cold War days, want to defend Taiwan’s independence. But pragmatic American policy-makers are aware of the complexity of the situation, that it may be difficult to defend Taiwan’s claims to independence. Till the thaw in US-China relations in 1973, when then American president Richard Nixon visited Beijing and shook hands with Chinese leader Mao Zedong, it was Taiwan which the permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). It was an anomaly because the tiny island was given official recognition by the Western world because it would not recognise the communist government under Mao from 1949 onward. China replaced Taiwan as member of the UNSC.

China then holds strong views on the Taiwan question. Taiwan is seen as a country that was put up by the United States and its Western allies to oppose the communists in Beijing. For long years, Chiang Kai-Shek, who was heading the Chinese government until the communists took over in 1949, fled to Taiwan. And the Americans supported the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-Shek. He remained a dictator in Taiwan for decades.  The constitutional reforms and free elections had begun in the 1990s, and there have been popularly elected governments since then.