On Saturday, Taiwan elected [5] its first female President in what’s being billed as a “landmark” vote that returns the DPP to power for the first time in 8 years.
When all of the votes were in, it wasn’t even close. 59-year-old former law professor Tsai Ing-wen captured 56% of the vote while KMT’s Eric Chu managed just 31% in a humiliating defeat for the Nationalists.
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DPP also won its first majority in the legislature, grabbing 68 of 113 seats. Previously, KMT held 64 seats.
The election raises immediate questions about the island’s relationship with China. "Although Ms. Tsai has vowed to maintain a broadly stable relationship with mainland China, she remains reticent on specific strategies and has remained ambiguous about the ‘1992 consensus’ which has supported the principle of “one China” although each side has been allowed to interpret it differently," Goldman wrote, ahead of the ballot. "Her position has been that this is an option for Taiwan, but not the only one."
Well for Beijing, “one China” is the “only” option as was made abundantly clear earlier this month, when sixteen-year-old pop star Chou Tzu-yu was forced to apologize for waving a Taiwanese flag on a South Korean TV program. “There is only one China,” she said, staring blankly into the camera before promising to behave going forward. “I am proud I am Chinese.”
China had no immediate response to the election outcome but on Sunday, we got a series of hilarious proclamations and warnings from Chinese media.
“If there is no peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan's new authority will find the sufferings of the people it wishes to resolve on the economy, livelihood and its youth will be as useless as looking for fish in a tree,” Xinhua wrote, adding that “hallucinations” of independence will “poison” the island’s people.
As a reminder, China in 2005 passed a law permitting an attack to prevent secession, when the last DPP president, Chen Shui-bian, sought a referendum on statehood.
“Tsai should keep in mind that if she revisits Chen’s dangerous path to cross the red line of cross-Straits relations, she will meet a dead end,” The Global Times warned [7] in its own “op-ed.” Here’s more from The Times:
The vote is not a gauge of cross-Straits relations. The DPP’s victory doesn’t mean the majority of Taiwanese support Taiwan independence. Tsai and her party are aware of this, so in her victory speech, she was evasive about the current issues between Taiwan and the mainland, only scrupulously stating that she will be engaged in a “consistent, predictable and sustainable cross-Straits relations. The KMT’s eight-year administration has made contributions to the current stage of cross-Straits relations, a performance that merits recognition both in Taiwan and the mainland. After this power shift, the DPP should assume the responsibility of serving the best interests of Taiwanese society, avoiding creating trouble for cross-Straits relations like it did as an opposition party. If the DPP abandons the progress made by its predecessor in the past eight years, it will jeopardize its future as a ruling party. The lesson of Chen Shui-bian should be a long-lasting lesson.
Yes, the "lesson" should be "long-lasting," lest China should have to re-teach it.
As we discussed on Saturday, the election in Taiwan comes at a "tricky" time. The island is heavily dependent on trade with China and exports are in free fall amid slumping demand from the mainland. In fact, exports to China fell a whopping 16% in December and dropped 20% Y/Y in November. Given that, Tsai can ill-afford to rock the boat if she hopes to resuscitate the economy.
Additionally, there are significant security concerns in the region stemming from Beijing's land reclamation efforts in the Spratlys and a dispute between China and Japan regarding the contested Senkaku Islands and nearby oil and gas fields. More generally, Washington's regional allies swear that Xi is out to effectively impose a kind of Sino-Monroe Doctrine against the will of the nations that would fall under its purview. Any aggressive action by Beijing with regard to an independence push by the new government in Taiwan would only exacerbate the situation.
Time will tell if Tsai has indeed learned the "lesson" of Chen or whether a black swan will land in the Taiwan Strait.
