By Eryk Bagshaw
Taipei: Taiwan’s vote counters had barely finished tallying up the ballots when the island’s next president, Lai Ching-te, began talking about the other elections on his mind.
Lai, who won an unprecedented third-successive term for the Democratic Progressive Party last week through a campaign based on resisting Chinese government aggression towards Taiwan, acknowledged in his victory speech that the vote was just the first of the “most highly anticipated elections of 2024”.
A montage of Taiwan president-elect Lai Ching-te and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. Credit: Nathan Perri
Indonesia will go to the polls to elect its new leader in February, India will follow in April, and the United Kingdom most likely in the second half of this year.
But it is the US presidential ballot in November that is at the forefront of diplomats’ minds in Taipei and around the world.
Former US president Donald Trump is the clear favourite to secure the Republican nomination after a resounding victory at the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday.
A YouGov national poll of Democrat and Republican voters published in The Economist on Wednesday had the 77-year-old almost tied with President Joe Biden, 43 per cent to Biden’s 44 per cent.
Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the 2019 G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.Credit: AP
Despite facing dozens of criminal charges for attempting to subvert the 2020 election, Trump has the momentum as the Republican primaries head to New Hampshire this week. His re-election would have significant implications for Taiwan and the Asia Pacific.
Trump’s first term marked a significant hardening in US relations with China after a relatively sanguine period during the Obama administration.
Trump and his deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger oversaw a shift – fuelled by China’s actions and by Trump’s determination to get a better trade deal – that made China-US relations spiral to their lowest point in history.
Richard Bush, a senior fellow at the Washington think-tank the Brookings Institution, told a Taipei forum in 2019 that many parts of the administration had a “you-live-I-die approach to China”.
The stance initially sparked excitement among some voters in Taiwan who wanted the island to begin moving towards formal independence with US support.
But that excitement was short-lived. Trump’s unpredictability meant that he could veer from threatening China to calling President Xi Jinping a “brilliant guy” and hosting him at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
In the same vein, Trump began his relationship with Taiwan by breaking decades of diplomatic precedence by taking a phone call from its president-elect Tsai Ing-wen in 2016.
The US, like Australia, does not have official relations with the Taiwanese government under the “One China” policy and the phone call triggered immediate blowback from Beijing.
Hikers rest on top of Elephant Mountain in Taipei ahead of the Presidential election on Saturday. Credit: Daniel Ceng
“Trump was the first person to break the window,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist and fellow at the Atlantic Council.
“His unconventional style for many Taiwanese was exactly what Taiwan needed to break out of an impasse.”
By 2018, Trump’s tone had changed. “What do we get from protecting Taiwan, say?,” Trump asked aides, according to Bob Woodward’s book Fear: Trump in the White House.
“Without a good process, we treat Taiwan in a schizophrenic way,” said Bush from the Brookings Institution.
Trump’s erratic behaviour, once viewed with a mixture of amusement and fascination in Taiwan, now fuels anxiety among some voters.
Speak to anyone outside the extreme fringes in Taipei, Tainan and Kaohsiung and you get one of three responses: they want the status quo maintained indefinitely; they would like to one day be independent but are in no rush; or they would like to be unified, just not under Chinese Communist Party rule.
Very few want the situation resolved in the next four years and no major political party supports moving towards independence or unification.
“Things might become very unpredictable,” said Frankie Kuo, a business owner in Tainan in southern Taiwan over which fighter jets fly daily to meet Chinese warplanes harassing Taiwan’s air identification zone. “He could make some crazy decisions.”
Uncertainty for Taiwan is perilous. The Chinese Communist Party claims Taiwan as its own despite never having ruled the democratic island after it split from the mainland at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. To keep the Chinese military from launching an attack, the island has been governed under the status quo for decades. This allows Taiwan to be self-governed without declaring formal international independence.
Taiwan is simply too small to maintain the status quo on its own. US military support is vital. Once military power shifts in one direction, the temptation for Beijing will be to use its advantage to secure a quick and decisive victory.
The island is already facing a $29 billion backlog of missile, rocket launchers and other military equipment orders under the Biden and Trump administrations.
Xi has ordered his military to be ready for war by 2027. That does not mean he will launch an attack, just that he wants it to be prepared if he does, halfway through a potential second Trump term.
“Certainty is critical for predictability and confidence building,” said Sung. “Both for Taiwan’s internal morale and for enabling US-Taiwan cooperation.”
Chung Chi-Hui, a professor of mass communications at Shih Hsin University, said many Taiwanese people, especially those who did not experience the US cutting ties with Taiwan to recognise China in 1979, believe that America would support Taiwan, no matter who was in office.
“But they do not know there are other domestic issues or politics in the US that may determine if the US would come to Taiwan’s defence,” she said. “The Taiwanese people do not know what American isolationism is.”
Trump’s unpredictability leaves all options on the table: ongoing support for the status quo, a sudden shift towards Taiwanese independence, or standing aside if China chooses to invade.
Supporters attend a political rally for the Taiwan presidential election in Taipei last week. Credit: Daniel Ceng
When the Japanese invaded Taiwan in 1895, it took them less than four days to take Taipei.
The stakes are much higher now because there are nuclear weapons and two superpowers armed to the teeth that could draw allies, including Australia into the conflict.
Beijing must remain convinced that invading is not worth the sacrifice.
And Taiwanese leaders must remain convinced the cost of independence is not worth it, no matter how unfair it may be on their people, 14 million of whom just voted in fair and free presidential elections.
In Trump’s winner-takes-all approach to negotiation, the status quo is an uneasy concept. But it has taken decades of discipline and certainty to get to this point.
Like a football match that ends 0-0, no one really wins. They just get to play again next week. We should all be hoping for a draw.
