The presidential and parliamentary elections that Taiwan held on January 13 were
in many respects the most significant that will be held in the Indo-Pacific
this year.
Certainly, the elections that will be held in Indonesia in February
and in India in April will involve larger countries and many more voters than
the one in tiny Taiwan, and plenty of international attention will be paid to
Jakarta and New Delhi as the results come in. Nevertheless, we are likely to
learn more from Taiwan’s election than we will from either of those giants.
The first significant thing about Taiwan’s elections is simply that they
happen: This is the only Chinese-speaking country that has a democracy – and
that democracy, which is now three decades old, is not just surviving but
thriving. Taiwan proves that there is nothing incompatible between Chinese
culture, society or history and the political system called democracy.
The second significant point was, of course, the result: that Taiwan for the
first time elected a new president who is from the same political party as the
predecessor – and it did so in defiance of threats and intimidation from the
huge, powerful neighbor that is just 100 kilometers away across the Taiwan
Strait.
After eight years of the Democratic People’s Party’s Tsai Ing-wen as
president, the DPP’s Lai Ching-te, who for the past four years has been her
vice-president, will be inaugurated as president in May. This is notable partly
because normally the presidency has moved from one major party to another as
part of the natural political cycle of optimism, disillusionment and then
change.
But mainly it is notable because an important feature of recent years
has been tension between Communist China and Taiwan, with China sending more
and more fighter planes to fly over Taiwanese territory as a tool of
intimidation.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 naturally raised the question, for
Taiwan as well as for other countries in the region, including Japan, of
whether 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 Jinping
said that unification with Taiwan will surely happen and that all Chinese on
both sides of the Taiwan Strait should “share in the glory of the rejuvenation
of the Chinese nation.”
Consequently, it looked possible that Taiwanese voters who feared war might
vote for a change, preferring a party that favors better relations with China.
This did not happen: instead of switching to the Kuomintang, the oldest and
most pro-China party, voters decided to stick with a DPP president.
But here’s the third significant point: During the election, there was no
party advocating unification with China, and all three parties advocated
strengthening the island’s defenses. And despite every effort at spreading
disinformation through the internet and through Taiwanese media, to discredit
the DPP government and to persuade voters to feel stronger sympathies towards
mainland 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 been
disappointing 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 Taiwan
People’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 the
DPP’s loss of its working majority by claiming that it does not represent the
true views of the Taiwanese people. Yet on the matter of unification and of
stronger defense against China, the election reflected opinion polls very
accurately: Opinion polls show that under 2% of Taiwanese people are in favor
of unification. More than three-quarters say they want to keep the status quo.
More than 60% identify themselves as Taiwanese rather than either Chinese or
both Chinese and Taiwanese.
Naturally we, as outsiders, as well as the Taiwanese, must wonder what will
happen next, among China, Taiwan and of course the United States. There has
been much speculation about whether China might greet President Lai’s victory
by increasing its tactics of intimidation.
Yet the reality is that unless it were to attempt a real invasion or
blockade, China does not have any good options. The government in Beijing has
refused to hold talks with the Taiwanese government since 2016, as it
considered President Tsai to be a separatist. Talks will presumably remain
frozen under President Lai, but he is hardly going to care about that.
Moreover, economic pressure on Taiwan no longer works: although there are
strong economic ties between the island and the mainland, Taiwan is a highly
globalized economy that is not dependent on any one market. Now that China is
experiencing 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 American
presidential election in November to decide what it should do. It will continue
to try to harass Taiwan, just as it does the Japanese Senkaku islands and areas
in the South China Sea that it disputes with the Philippines, but the real
question facing President Xi is what attitude the president of the United
States will take.
In 2021 and 2022 President Joe Biden broke with decades of American
conventions by clearly declaring that in the event of a Chinese attack on
Taiwan the US would intervene directly to defend Taiwan. Japan’s defense
build-up plan, including its acquisition of US Tomahawk missiles and movement
of military assets to the Nansei (Ryukyu) islands near Taiwan, is helping to
make a Chinese attack look less viable. So is the agreement by the Philippines
to give America access to nine bases in its islands for logistics and potential
use by US forces.
But the biggest question is whether whoever is elected to the White House in
November decides to continue these policies, especially that commitment to come
to Taiwan’s aid in the event of an invasion or blockade. The second most
significant election for the future of the Indo-Pacific, after Taiwan’s on
January 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.