Written by Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy.
Image credit: 07.26 總統接見「歐洲議會外交委員會代表團」 by 總統府/ Flickr, license: CC BY 2.0 DEED.
On January 13, 2024, the people of Taiwan elected a new president and a new parliament. President-elect Lai Ching-te (賴清德) retained the presidency of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the political party in power since 2016. He vowed to continue the policies of his predecessor, current President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文). Despite mounting pressure from China, in her eight years in power, Tsai strengthened Taiwan’s international profile. She did so by aligning the island with like-minded democracies from across the globe, joining international efforts to address global challenges and counter authoritarian threats to the rules-based global order.
While Lai made his commitment to democracy a central pillar of his leadership, he also said the elections open a new chapter for Taiwan. With cross-strait tensions at their highest and China unlikely to compromise on the island, will Taiwan be able to pursue and expand its internationalisation under new leadership in a way that helps preserve the status quo, contributes to regional peace, and upholds the international rules-based order?
If one is to judge the future of cross-strait relations by assessing Taiwan’s track record, despite tensions, the picture is almost reassuring. While threats from China have reached unprecedented levels, even threatening Taiwan’s sheer existence, the island has demonstrated its commitment to regional peace and stability in cross-strait relations, in line with the status quo. On the eve of his victory, Lai said he hoped for a return to “healthy and orderly” exchanges with China, reiterating his desire for talks based on “dignity and parity”.
In contrast, if one is to judge the future based on China’s track record, the future looks rather bleak – not just for Taiwan but for the world, not least for China. In 2023, Beijing amplified diplomatic, political and military pressure on Taiwan. It significantly stepped up destabilising air and sea operations around the island with ballistic missile overflights, staging a series of unprecedentedly large exercises, launching cyberattacks and using economic coercion. It also used more cost-effective methods, such as information manipulation, to interfere in Taiwan’s electoral politics. Through these measures, China undermined regional peace – and compromised global shipping.
In 2022 alone, the Taiwan Strait handled the movement of more than 80 per cent of the largest ships by tonnage and more than 40 per cent of the world’s container fleet. With the strait operating as the main shipping route between China, Japan, the US and Europe, in 2023, the EU’s High Representative Josep Borrell even described the strait as “the most strategic strait in the world”.
Ironically, with its belligerence Beijing did not only undermine global trade and security, but it also damaged its own grand narrative that seeks to project China as a responsible global power. Certainly not a good illustration of how “to tell China’s story well”, in particular not now, that the country’s global image is already collapsing, with the lowest public perceptions seen in decades.
A retrospective look at recent dynamics in cross-strait relations helps understand the complexity of tensions that will continue to shape perceptions and self-perceptions, as well as narratives and actions on both sides of the strait.
While cross-strait ties have been tense for years, it is since 2016 that dialogue has been suspended. Coercion, rather than dialogue, has become the key element of Beijing’s approach to maintaining control of Taiwan. Weaponising economics to influence politics has also affected the structure and dynamics of cross-strait trade.
In December 2023, just weeks before the elections, China’s State Council’s Customs Tariff Commission accused Taiwan of unfairly blocking exports of Chinese products, violating the rules of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), which forms the basis for cross-strait economic and trade discussions. It then halted tariff cuts on twelve petrochemical products coming from Taiwan. Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs said this was the latest example of Beijing “politicising trade” and reminded Beijing to handle any trade dispute through WTO instead. In its response, Taipei chose calm over hostility.
While some Taiwanese firms have deepened their investment in China to protect market access, more have accelerated efforts to relocate and diversify into other markets, gradually moving away from Chinese supply chains and seeking to navigate growing uncertainty. In 2022, Taiwanese investment in South and Southeast Asia (USD 5.2 billion) for the first time exceeded investments in China (USD 5 billion).
Unsurprisingly, an article published in China’s Global Times in April 2023 attributed the decline in cross-strait trade to the DPP and its policies to follow “the US-led, ill-intentioned containment against the Chinese mainland, which has seriously disrupted supply chains”. Moreover, the article claimed that in doing so, the DPP “coordinated with some anti-China forces in the US-led West.”
This wording illustrates, yet again, Beijing’s hostility against Taiwan. More importantly, it shows that China continues to deny Taiwan’s, its government’s and the people’s agency to act as a democracy led by a democratically elected government that looks out for the interests of its people, bottom-up. That a top-down authoritarian leadership fails to appreciate the value of democracy comes as no surprise.
For the DPP, Taiwan and China are two separate entities rather than part of a single “one China.” For Beijing, Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. The two positions are irreconcilable, and convergence that suits both sides looks unlikely. China pursues false sovereignty claims over Taiwan and has pledged to annex it, by force if necessary, based on these claims, against the will of the people of Taiwan.
In contrast, the DPP continues to uphold the status quo, with its leadership asserting that Taiwan is already independent, so there is no need to declare independence. It is in response to China’s threats and grey zone activities that the Taiwanese public and political leadership have grown more sceptical of Beijing’s intentions and more inclined to support Taiwan’s existence separate from the PRC. In other words, China’s attempts to bring Taiwan closer through political co-optation and trade incentives have failed.
Rather than pulling Taiwan closer, the two sides are likely to drift further apart in the years to come. The possibility of Taiwan’s permanent separation will keep the Chinese leadership worried. Its hostility will likely further nurture the sense of belonging and attachment of the people of Taiwan to the core of what the island represents to them, namely a democracy. This sort of attachment to Taiwan through its identity as a democracy goes beyond political affiliation, although there are divergent views across the island on how to handle China.
Beijing’s political support and rhetorical alignment with Moscow in its renewed aggression against Ukraine has further amplified Taiwan’s awareness of the existential threat it faces and deepened the people’s sense of interconnectedness with like-minded democracies across the globe. Yet, the fear of “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow” has resonated widely beyond Taiwan, in Europe and overall, across the Indo-Pacific.
Taiwan’s self-perception as a democracy has strengthened throughout 2023 in different ways. First, Taiwan has further reinforced unofficial international relationships and has pledged to defend itself, not least inspired by the courage of the people of Ukraine. Taiwan has made subnational diplomacy central to its international engagements across the world; people-to-people contact, culture and parliamentary diplomacy all fall within what is considered normal practice in a democracy.
Parliamentary delegations from across Europe, including from the European Parliament, US Congressional visits, Canadian parliamentarians, members of the Japan-ROC Diet’s Consultative Council and more such visits have continued an already well-established trend in 2023. This is likely to continue in 2024 and is expected to further consolidate Taiwan’s international profile outside of the China factor.
Second, in 2023 Taiwan demonstrated, yet again, that it remains committed to contributing to global development, prosperity, and peace by aligning itself with democracies to jointly address natural disasters, as well as to respond to authoritarian threats. As such, after joining Western-led sanctions against Russia in 2022, in December 2023, Taiwan’s economy minister said the government had expanded a list of sanctioned goods for Russia to prevent Taiwanese high-tech goods from being used for military purposes.
Taiwan’s government also offered relief to the victims of Japan’s earthquake that occurred on January 1, 2024. Demonstrating goodwill and dignity, Taiwan’s government even said that it stood ready to help when an earthquake happened in China’s Gansu province in December 2023.
In her last New Year’s address as president, Tsai Ing-wen captured Taiwan’s global orientation: “If someone were to ask me what my legacy for Taiwan is, I would say that I am leaving behind a Taiwan of the world”. When he officially takes power in May 2024, William Lai will inherit a Taiwan of the world. Keeping it global will require as much work from Taiwan as from the international community. Staying aligned is in the interest of both.
Going forward, the EU and Taiwan must be more strategic about how they engage each other as they both learn to navigate a new reality and manage a changing China. While they have complex relations with Beijing, they both must invest more in understanding this complexity and contribute to each other’s efforts to become more resilient. Pursuing parliamentary diplomacy will help them to better ground bilateral cooperation and circumvent existing boundaries, while strengthening mutual awareness.
Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy is a Ministry of Science and Technology Postdoctoral Fellow in Taiwan, Non-Resident Fellow at Taiwan NextGen Foundation, Head of Associates Network at 9Dashline, and former political advisor in the European Parliament (2008-2020). She tweets @zsuzsettte.
This article was published as part of a special issue on “2023 to 2024: Looking Back, Thinking Ahead.”
