There was a hush on the streets of Taipei after election day in mid-January. The voters had chosen Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party as their president, a move which some believed would trigger a crisis with China.
It had denounced Lai and his deputy, the eloquent Hsiao Bi-khim, as “separatists” who stood for “Taiwan independence.” Fire and fury surely awaited.
But the hush continued. The official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported the result in a flatly worded dispatch of fewer than 100 words noting that the two had been elected to serve as “leader and deputy of the Taiwan region.” This was reproduced in the People’s Daily without comment. The rest of the state media took its downbeat cue from there.
Only a party newspaper in Fujian, the province that faces Taiwan across the strait, added the once-obligatory quotation from an official that the island was undoubtedly part of China.
The Chinese military went on staging flights around Taiwan and floated observation balloons into its airspace. Otherwise, no crisis.
So what happened? The reality is that this is, at best, a pause. But it is a space in which the European Union (EU) and its allies can work to strengthen links with a thriving Chinese capitalist democracy of some 23 million people who live under the threat of invasion by the People’s Republic, a population of more than 1.3 billion.
The heavy lifting on security will still be borne by the United States, Japan, and a handful of powers ready and able to send air and naval forces to the area. But the subtleties of Taiwanese politics and the sophistication of China’s response can be better understood.
Taken together, they create a possibility for economic as well as military deterrence, offering incentives to avoid a war that because of its global consequences would make the Middle East and Ukraine seem mere provincial disputes.
First, there is no mystery about China’s reason for moderation. The Taiwan polls came just as its prime minister, Li Qiang, was about to take the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos with a message that China was open for business. The economy is slowing and President Xi Jinping’s regime sees the restoration of growth as a priority. This was not the time to rattle sabers or global investors.
The second reason for Chinese restraint is that the election results were not, in fact, that bad from Beijing’s point of view. Lai’s victory was achieved because his two opponents split the vote between the candidate of the traditional Kuomintang Party and an insurgent former mayor of Taipei. He won with 5.6 million votes, about 40% of the ballots cast, in a first-past-the-post contest.
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It was a similar story in the Legislative Yuan, the parliament in Taipei. Here the Democratic Progressive Party lost its majority. This caused the head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, Chen Binhua, to remark that “the DPP no longer represents mainstream public opinion in Taiwan since it won less than 50% of the popular vote.”
In practice, therefore, the new president will be constrained and the uneasy status quo may continue. Further evidence that Beijing takes a sanguine view came from the commentator Victor Gao, a reliable echo of regime opinion, who told the Global Times that China “has momentum on its side.”
The EU, which just unveiled new measures on economic security and investment, has every interest in strengthening business and cultural links with Taiwan as it seeks a new balance in dealing with China. Its role can be pivotal.
That was not lost on Premier Li Qiang at Davos, where he made a conciliatory pitch to the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, a champion of “de-risking” from the People’s Republic. China wants high-grade technology, but at present Taiwan is far ahead of it. It is the world’s leading maker of semiconductor chips vital to everything in the modern economy, manufacturing more than 90% of the world’s most advanced chips. That makes the island both a hostage and a prize.
The EU has run a model policy in Taiwan. It is the largest foreign investor, with bilateral trade in goods of about €50bn ($54bn) annually. The EU’s mission in Taipei says innovative information technology, artificial intelligence, smart mobility, and green energy all offer new opportunities for European business. Nobody says that sort of thing about China.
Europe has also deepened its institutional links with Taiwan, which joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2002 and is seen by Brussels as “a like-minded member of WTO.” Some 15 EU states have missions in Taipei; in effect informal embassies. The Union finances a European Business and Regulatory Co-operation program specifically designed to align commercial collaboration. Taiwanese research institutions can join EU framework programs. In a quiet way, the two are genuine partners.
The EU’s diplomats have shown themselves equal to Chinese subtlety by avoiding easy point-scoring. They issued a statement that “welcomed the election and congratulated all the voters who took part in this democratic exercise.” When the People’s Daily’s resident patriot, columnist “Zhong Sheng,” at last stirred himself to grumble on January 23, it was mainly to grouse about the United States “and a few other countries” who had congratulated Lai himself on the victory.
It will be argued in Washington that the Europeans are free riders on the huge American commitment to security in East Asia. A second Trump administration would certainly say so. Yet it is possible to strengthen America’s hand with policies that offer incentives to China so it is worthwhile to keep the peace.
It is worth recalling how high the stakes are. A survey of experts by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington says that China is more likely to try to blockade or quarantine Taiwan than to invade it.
Anyone who thinks that might fall short of a crisis need only look at the missile strikes in the Red Sea as attentively as China and Russia are doing. There are four months left until Lai is inaugurated as president on May 20. They must not be wasted.
Veteran foreign correspondent Michael Sheridan is working on a biography of Xi Jinping, ‘The Red Emperor’, to be published by Headline Books, part of the Hachette group, in 2024. He is the author of ‘The Gate to China: A New History of the People’s Republic and Hong Kong’ (2021).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Europe’s Edge
CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America.
