China Failed to Sway Taiwan’s Election. What Happens Now?
I was surprised to see, in pre-election news, the supposedly pro-China KMT/Nationalist candidate analogizing Xi Jinping to a criminal:
Good for Taiwan. China seems to want to win something by acting like a bully, by attrition, by wearing them down, and Taiwan has been standing firm.
I expect China will continue poking and prodding for weak points, and I hope not finding any. I don’t expect China to actually force a war against Taiwan (and their allies).
Some expert on cable news, who sounded she knew what she was talking about, cautioned that Lai got only 44% of the vote. It’s a plurality election so he wins, but it’s a weak position to be in when 56% of the voting population is against you and your stances.
From afar we can cheer his victory - I certainly do - but China will be in a constant snit for the next four years. Hope for the best; expect the worst.
Actually, even worse - Lai got only 40%.
That being said, not all of the other 60% are opposed to his party. Some of them are disgruntled voters who would otherwise vote for Lai except that they wanted to make a centrist third-party statement by voting for Ko, the TPP.
By analogy, it would be kind of like the 1992 American presidential election where Ross Perot got a big chunk of the vote, but some of them were voters who would otherwise have voted for Bush and the Republicans if Perot hadn’t been on the ballot.
I don’t think “pro-China” is a phrase I’d tie too closely to the KMT. Unless you mean it’s first 40 years of dictatorial single party rule of Taiwan when it still claimed it was the actual government of mainland China. Or unless you mean it’s opposed to Taiwanization, which it certainly is.
I’m gonna need some explanation on this one, because the ghost of my high school ROTC instructor is screaming in my mind upon hearing those two phrases next to each other.
“It’s complicated” describes it best. The KMT is no longer a de facto dictatorship, elections are free and fair, but the KMT is still a big player and won the first legitimate democratic elections. They are no longer exactly claiming to be the de jure government of mainland China, but they completely oppose the idea that Taiwan is a separate nation and Taiwanese nationalism. Just as a reminder or for those unaware, Taiwan, at the time known as Formosa was taken from China by Japan in 1895 and was owned by Japan until they lost the Second World War in 1945. When Chaing Kai-Shek, the head of the KMT, lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communists in 1949, he fled to Formosa/Taiwan and imposed what was essentially a foreign dictatorship over the island, which hadn’t been part of China for 50 years; the government was run by KMT officials from the mainland.
There are a lot of contradictions in the KMT nowadays:
Cross-Strait relations
A Chinese nationalist party,[57][95] the Kuomintang strongly adheres to the defense of the Republic of China and upholding the Constitution of the Republic of China. It is also strongly opposed to de jure Taiwanese independence (under a theoretical “Republic of Taiwan”), which would mean recognizing the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate government representing China. It favors closer relations with the PRC and the CCP,[116] though it also opposes Chinese unification under the “one country, two systems” framework,[118][119][120] and any non-peaceful means to resolve the cross-strait disputes.[121] The party also accepts the 1992 Consensus, which defines both sides of the Taiwan Strait as “one China” but maintains its ambiguity to different interpretations.[119]
Chinese conservatism
In modern Taiwanese politics, the Kuomintang is seen as a centre-right[5] to right-wing[6] political party. The Kuomintang believes in the values associated with conservatism.[122][123] The Kuomintang has a strong tradition of defending the established institutions of the Republic of China, such as defending Constitution of the Republic of China, defending the five branches of government (modeled on Sun Yat-sen’s political philosophy of Three Principles of the People), espousing the One-China policy as a vital component for the Republic of China (ROC)'s international security and economic development, as opposed to Taiwanization. The Kuomintang claims to have a strong tradition of fighting to defend, preserve and revive traditional Chinese culture and religious freedom as well as advocating for Confucian values, economic liberalism and anti-communism. The KMT still sees the Republic of China in Taiwan as presenting the true cultural China which has preserved Chinese culture, as compared to the People’s Republic of China which had experienced Chinese cultural destruction during the Cultural Revolution.
Some Kuomintang conservatives see traditional social or family values as being threatened by liberal values and oppose same-sex marriage.[citation needed] KMT conservatives are also typically against the abolishment of capital punishment, arguing the need to maintain deterrence against harsh crimes.[citation needed] Conservative KMT policies may also be characterized by a focus on maintaining the traditions and doctrine of Confucian thought, namely reinforcing the morals of paternalism and patriarchy in Taiwan’s society. In terms of education policy, KMT policies advocate increasing more Classical Chinese content in Chinese education and Chinese history content in order to reinforce Chinese cultural identity, as opposed to de-sinicization attempts by advocates of Taiwan independence who typically decrease Classical Chinese and Chinese history content in schools in order to achieve Taiwanization.
Note that it is still anti-communist, it’s written into the KMT charter, but it somehow is seen as PRC-friendly. Or at least anti-Taiwan independence. It favors closer relations with the PRC and the Chinese Communist Party despite being anti-communist, and in theory still favors reunification at some indeterminate date and by some indeterminate means but has abandoned the wild idea that it will retake mainland China, opposes a one country, two systems framework but ambiguously accepts that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one China.
As I said at the start, “it’s complicated.”
Confusing diplomacy in the document:
U.S. policy, rarely stated
publicly, is to treat Taiwan’s political status as unresolved.
The U.S. government attributes frictions over Taiwan to
increasingly coercive PRC military and other activities
around Taiwan. The U.S. government views such activities
as challenging what Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken
describes as the “foundational” understanding in the three
joint communiqués: that “any differences regarding Taiwan
will be resolved peacefully.”
Minority or coalition government is really not that rare across the democratic world, and was very likely in this instance, so I wouldn’t draw that much significance from it.
And it is not as though the other parties were pledging reunification…“pro” and “anti” China are pretty relative terms in this case.
Like many diplomatic solutions to seemingly intractable problems, the US position is to oppose changes to the status quo and be strategically ambiguous about the consequences should either party do so.
Agreed it is complicated.
Given China’s irredentist claims, it’s important to point out that when, prior to 1895, China controlled parts of Taiwan, it didn’t control it all – just, generally, the west coast. Taiwan was first unified, after 1895, when Japanese colonialists conquered the indigenous people of the interior. To give a bit of evidence, consider this in the Wikipedia article on the 1874 Japanese invasion of Taiwan:
The expedition demonstrated that China was not in effective control of Taiwan . . .
The first Chinese to really control Taiwan were the late 1940’s Nationalist invaders. And it wasn’t long before most of them were co-opted by the invaded society.
I’m glad that a pro-indepence party won. But, it probably increased the chance that China will invade.
Strategic ambiguity is the State Department position.
But regarding the Presidential position:
President Joe Biden has promised – four times – that the US would defend Taiwan from an attack by China.
The first time Biden said it, maybe it was a gaffe. But given the repetition, it is hard for me to see Biden backing down if China invades.
However, Trump is refusing to say what he would do on grounds that bad events during his term would be inconceivable. And even if he did say, DJT lacks credibility. So if the GOP ticket wins in November, we are back to a form of strategic ambiguity.
Taiwan is already independent, but of course cannot admit it because of a bullying neighbor. All three presidential candidates were in favor of diplomatic allies (encouraging nations to open full formal embassies in Taipei). Now that everyone knows and acknowledges that Taiwan could never conquer the mainland, having foreign embassies in Taipei makes no sense unless you value your country’s independence.
So all three parties were pro-independence, as well pro-telling-Beijing-and-Washington-otherwise.
The foreign policy disagreement had to do with tiny policy differences that supposedly would reduce the chances of invasion by an irredentist bully. From my little experience, the only Taiwanese citizens who actually want to give up independence from China are literally psychotic. (I recall someone bicycling down the street yelling it.)
I don’t want to believe this, but can think of arguments both ways.
Possibility 1: Of the three candidates, Lai, the winner, was the most competent and disciplined. So he is least likely to make a blunder that becomes a casus belli.
Possibility 2: You are correct. The PRC government is such a captive of its wolf warrior rhetoric that it couldn’t turn around and attack its anointed preferred President. This implies Xi Jinping is some sort of idiot, and I’m skeptical that idiots have skills needed to gain control of a country. But – could be.
Possibility 3: Makes no difference! If Beijing wants to invade, they will come up with a pretext. If they don’t want to invade, they won’t. This seems to me most likely.
Well, the comparison would be Putin losing a favorable government in Ukraine. Dictators are vulnerable when their supposed vassals thumb their nose at them by electing a candidate specifically to oppose their goals. So long as the government is reasonably in line and pays lip service to unity, the pressure is off the dictator to ‘solve the problem’.
Elections have triggered invasions or wars many times.
However, I’m happy to defer to your specific knowledge of the Taiwan situation, because there’s a lot of specifics I don’t know.
The election and our recognition of it did (unsurprisingly) annoy China and cause Taiwan to lose one of their few allies (Nauru) even if temporarily.
I know if I were a small local nation who I’d be courting, and it isn’t Taiwan.
I was a little surprised that the U.S. officially criticized Nauru for unwillingness to maintain a policy the U.S. doesn’t have the cojoins to adopt:
Nauru cutting ties disappointing: AIT
For those who don’t know, the American Institute in Taiwan is the let’s-humor-Beijing name for the U.S. Embassy in Taipei.
I recall an op-ed saying that Taiwan’s diplomatic ally game, which requires foreign aid expenditure, isn’t worthwhile. But acting on that would open up any Taiwan government to opposition criticism. Outgoing Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen says she “won’t play the pointless diplomatic money game with China”, but that may be aspirational.