The presidential and parliamentary elections that Taiwan held on January 13 werein many respects the most significant that will be held in the Indo-Pacificthis year.
Certainly, the elections that will be held in Indonesia in Februaryand in India in April will involve larger countries and many more voters thanthe one in tiny Taiwan, and plenty of international attention will be paid toJakarta and New Delhi as the results come in. Nevertheless, we are likely tolearn more from Taiwan’s election than we will from either of those giants.
The first significant thing about Taiwan’s elections is simply that theyhappen: This is the only Chinese-speaking country that has a democracy – andthat democracy, which is now three decades old, is not just surviving butthriving. Taiwan proves that there is nothing incompatible between Chineseculture, society or history and the political system called democracy.
The second significant point was, of course, the result: that Taiwan for thefirst time elected a new president who is from the same political party as thepredecessor – and it did so in defiance of threats and intimidation from thehuge, powerful neighbor that is just 100 kilometers away across the TaiwanStrait.
After eight years of the Democratic People’s Party’s Tsai Ing-wen aspresident, the DPP’s Lai Ching-te, who for the past four years has been hervice-president, will be inaugurated as president in May. This is notable partlybecause normally the presidency has moved from one major party to another aspart of the natural political cycle of optimism, disillusionment and thenchange.
But mainly it is notable because an important feature of recent yearshas been tension between Communist China and Taiwan, with China sending moreand more fighter planes to fly over Taiwanese territory as a tool ofintimidation.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 naturally raised the question, forTaiwan as well as for other countries in the region, including Japan, ofwhether the next tragedy might be a Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan.
In his speech to the Chinese nation on December 31, China’s President Xi Jinpingsaid that unification with Taiwan will surely happen and that all Chinese onboth sides of the Taiwan Strait should “share in the glory of the rejuvenationof the Chinese nation.”
Consequently, it looked possible that Taiwanese voters who feared war mightvote for a change, preferring a party that favors better relations with China.This did not happen: instead of switching to the Kuomintang, the oldest andmost pro-China party, voters decided to stick with a DPP president.
But here’s the third significant point: During the election, there was noparty advocating unification with China, and all three parties advocatedstrengthening the island’s defenses. And despite every effort at spreadingdisinformation through the internet and through Taiwanese media, to discreditthe DPP government and to persuade voters to feel stronger sympathies towardsmainland China, there was no sign that such persuasion had any impact.
As in all elections, economic and social issues were top of most voters’concerns, especially in the parliamentary elections: Wage growth has beendisappointing and housing costs have risen.
For that reason, the DPP lost its majority of seats in the Legislative Yuan and will now have to negotiate for support from one of the other parties, probably the small and new TaiwanPeople’s Party. But as all three parties favor spending more money on defense,this should not pose a big problem for President Lai’s foreign or defense policies.
In its official response to the election result, China tried to exploit theDPP’s loss of its working majority by claiming that it does not represent thetrue views of the Taiwanese people. Yet on the matter of unification and ofstronger defense against China, the election reflected opinion polls veryaccurately: Opinion polls show that under 2% of Taiwanese people are in favorof unification. More than three-quarters say they want to keep the status quo.More than 60% identify themselves as Taiwanese rather than either Chinese orboth Chinese and Taiwanese.
Naturally we, as outsiders, as well as the Taiwanese, must wonder what willhappen next, among China, Taiwan and of course the United States. There hasbeen much speculation about whether China might greet President Lai’s victoryby increasing its tactics of intimidation.
Yet the reality is that unless it were to attempt a real invasion orblockade, China does not have any good options. The government in Beijing hasrefused to hold talks with the Taiwanese government since 2016, as itconsidered President Tsai to be a separatist. Talks will presumably remainfrozen under President Lai, but he is hardly going to care about that.
Moreover, economic pressure on Taiwan no longer works: although there arestrong economic ties between the island and the mainland, Taiwan is a highlyglobalized economy that is not dependent on any one market. Now that China isexperiencing slower growth, deflation and the impact of a declining population,the lure of riches in the vast Chinese market is far from irresistible.
The most likely scenario is that China will wait until after the Americanpresidential election in November to decide what it should do. It will continueto try to harass Taiwan, just as it does the Japanese Senkaku islands and areasin the South China Sea that it disputes with the Philippines, but the realquestion facing President Xi is what attitude the president of the UnitedStates will take.
In 2021 and 2022 President Joe Biden broke with decades of Americanconventions by clearly declaring that in the event of a Chinese attack onTaiwan the US would intervene directly to defend Taiwan. Japan’s defensebuild-up plan, including its acquisition of US Tomahawk missiles and movementof military assets to the Nansei (Ryukyu) islands near Taiwan, is helping tomake a Chinese attack look less viable. So is the agreement by the Philippinesto give America access to nine bases in its islands for logistics and potentialuse by US forces.
But the biggest question is whether whoever is elected to the White House inNovember decides to continue these policies, especially that commitment to cometo Taiwan’s aid in the event of an invasion or blockade. The second mostsignificant election for the future of the Indo-Pacific, after Taiwan’s onJanuary 13, will be America’s election on November 5.
Formerly editor-in-chief of The Economist, Bill Emmott is currently chairman of the Japan Society of the UK, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the International Trade Institute.
This is the English original of an article published in Japanese and English earlier this week in Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun and in English on the Substack Bill Emmott’s Global View. Bill Emmott’s Global View. It is republished here with kind permission.
