Analysis
Taiwan Faces a Stark Choice on China
One of the 15 key elections to watch in 2024’s historic global vote.
Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential hopeful, Lai Ching-te (center), cheers to his supporters
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, many Taiwanese were forced to grapple more seriously with a longstanding fear of their own: What if China invades Taiwan?
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, many Taiwanese were forced to grapple more seriously with a longstanding fear of their own: What if China invades Taiwan?
In 1949, after Mao Zedong’s Communist Party took over the mainland, the island of Taiwan became an outpost of exiled Chinese nationalists under leader Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang declared the government in Taiwan, known formally as the Republic of China, to be the only legitimate government of China, opposite its rivals in Beijing. Initially, much of the West—and most significantly, the United States—concurred. The Taiwanese government in Taipei became a key ally of Washington’s in the Cold War and occupied China’s seat on the United Nations Security Council.
But things changed in 1979, when the United States shifted its recognition from Taipei to Beijing after years of diplomacy that began with then-U.S. President Richard Nixon’s landmark 1972 visit to China. With this adjustment, Washington developed a policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan that exists to this day. Under the “one China” doctrine, Washington acknowledges that Beijing believes Taiwan is part of China but does not formally accept that position. In practice, the United States diplomatically recognizes only the People’s Republic of China—but maintains close ties with Taiwan and has become its de facto security guarantor. As FP’s Matthew Kroenig summarized in July 2022, “[t]he United States has said that it would be opposed to both Taiwan declaring independence and to a Chinese attack on the island.”
Taiwan’s future is a flash point of heightened U.S.-China competition. China views Taiwan as a renegade province and is keen to reunify. Today, the two territories have a degree of relations with one another and are also economically interdependent. But Beijing routinely intimidates Taipei with military exercises in the Taiwan Strait that have intensified in recent years. Beijing tends to escalate when it perceives the “one China” norm as having been breached—such as in 2022, when then-U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi became the first high-ranking official to visit Taiwan in 25 years.
The Taiwanese people are split on the question of how to resolve their island’s political status. Many initially sought some sort of eventual reunification with China but have been turned off by the mainland’s uptick in repression. The fate of Hong Kong has shown some Taiwanese that the promise of “one country, two systems” is, in their eyes, a farce. A majority of Taiwan’s inhabitants now identify as distinctly Taiwanese, even though 90 percent trace their ethnic origins to mainland China. (Taiwan is also home to an often-overlooked Indigenous population.)
While many Taiwanese desire total independence in theory, realpolitik has ruled that out. The status of Taiwan is so sensitive that in 2005 Beijing passed an anti-secession law that allows China to use military force against Taiwan if the island declares itself an independent state. Whether, and to what extent, Washington would come to Taipei’s aid in a Taiwan-China conflict is thus a subject of considerable debate across the Indo-Pacific—and in the halls of the U.S. Congress.
This issue is also driving Taiwan’s ongoing presidential campaign, which will culminate in elections on Jan. 13. Incumbent Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who heads the center-left Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), has run up against term limits and cannot seek reelection. Her party emerged out of a pro-democracy movement that sought an end to a one-party dictatorship in Taiwan under Chiang’s Kuomintang party (KMT). Since the island lifted martial law in 1987 and democratized in the early 1990s, the DPP and KMT have been the two main forces in Taipei.
Today’s democratic KMT traffics mostly in center-right politics. Though the DPP and KMT differ significantly on social issues—Tsai’s DPP, for example, helped legalize same-sex marriage in Taiwan—their biggest divergence is on China. Though each party’s position is nuanced, the KMT generally desires closer ties to China—and possible reunification talks of some kind—while the DPP sees Taiwan as an independent country and has sought to draw closer to Washington. Tsai visited the United States last year, on a stopover including a meeting with then-U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy that Beijing vowed to “fight”; meanwhile, a former KMT president became the first Taiwanese leader to travel to the Chinese mainland since 1949.
Though Tsai has more authoritatively sought to bolster Taiwan’s ties with the United States, the island has been losing ground in its long battle for global recognition. Today, only 13 countries recognize Taipei as opposed to Beijing. Taiwan initially found much of its global support in Latin America, but the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama have all switched their alliances from Taipei to Beijing since mid-2017, as Leland Lazarus of Florida International University and Ryan C. Berg of the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted in Foreign Policy last year. The Solomon Islands had done the same, Lazarus and Berg wrote. Taiwan’s growing diplomatic isolation, driven chiefly by countries’ economic interest in the mainland, has only heightened Taipei’s fears of a potentially militant Beijing.
More Elections to Watch in 2024
Tsai’s vice-president, Lai Ching-te, has secured the DPP’s presidential nomination and is vowing continuity. Like Tsai, he is disliked by China and maintains that Taiwan is already independent, skirting the thorny subject of an official declaration of independence. The KMT’s nominee, Hou Yu-ih, is the mayor of New Taipei—the area surrounding the capital—and seeks talks with China to calm tensions. The two are joined by a third-party candidate representing the relatively new Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). That group’s nominee, Ko Wen-je, does not have a clear position on China and has sought mostly to appeal to voters’ domestic concerns about energy security, housing, and the economy. (Taiwan recently weathered a recession.)
To win the presidency, a candidate needs only a plurality of the popular vote. Current polling shows Lai with a slight lead over Hou, while Ko trails far behind. (Hou and Ko tried—and failed—to form a united opposition coalition to challenge the DPP.) In a Dec. 19 survey cited by the Economist, 34 percent of voters said they intended to cast their ballots for Lai, with 31 percent backing Hou and 21 percent indicating Kou as their preference. Lai’s lead has narrowed considerably in recent weeks as Jan. 13 approaches.
The same day, Taiwanese voters will also elect members of Taiwan’s unicameral parliament, the 113-seat Legislative Yuan, via a mixed-member proportional system. Seventy-three legislators will be elected directly by their constituencies while 34 will gain their seats through party-based proportional representation. The remaining six seats are reserved for Indigenous communities. Parties must pass a 5 percent threshold to enter parliament.
Taiwan’s next president, guaranteed to be a newcomer, will need a cooperative parliament to make his agenda a reality. Whether or not he brings decisive policy change, that leader will be in the global spotlight—for better or for worse.
Allison Meakem is an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @allisonmeakem
More from Foreign Policy
A security guard stands aboard the Galaxy Leader cargo ship, seized by Houthi fighters, in a port on the Red Sea.
The West’s 3 Options to Combat the Houthi Attacks
One of the global economy’s most important arteries is at stake.
A woman poses for a photo in front of a tall decorated Christmas tree in front of a war-damanged building in Melitopol in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region with a Russian flag flying from a tall pole overhead.
What a Russian Victory Would Mean for Ukraine
Ukrainians would face terror on a scale not seen in Europe since the 20th-century era of totalitarian rule.
A damaged, bent no entry sign stands among a landscape of rubble and damaged buildings in Gaza.
The Trouble With a Cease-Fire
And what the international community should do instead in the Israel-Hamas war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gestures with an open hand while speaking during a TV news interview. Zelensky is dressed in his typical black t-shirt and is seated at a desk in front of a bright blue wall.
Ukraine Braces for Political Disaster in 2024
Grim possibilities in the United States and European Union have Kyiv on edge.
