A victory for Taiwanese democracy — but danger lies ahead

Tsai Ying-wen won an overwhelming victory in the Taiwan presidential election on Saturday, giving her a second four-year term. She owed her victory to eight months of protest in Hong Kong, which turned her electorate against China’s “one country, two systems” formula.

Candidate of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Tsai won 57.1 per cent of the vote, against 38.6 per cent for Han Kuo-yu, of the Kuomintang (KMT). She received 8.2 million votes, a record since Taiwan started direct elections for president in 1996, and up from her 6.99 million in the 2016 election.

The DPP won 61 seats in the 113-seat Legislative Assembly, down from 68 in 2016, but still a majority. The KMT won 38, up from 35.

“Peace means that China must abandon threats of force against Taiwan,” she declared in a victory speech after the vote. “Cross-strait relations should be based on peace, equality, democracy and dialogue.”

Her victory has momentous consequences. This result, however dramatic, will not persuade Beijing to change or soften its policy.

Beijing’s propaganda arm, the Xinhua News Agency, carried a commentary after the results were announced accusing Tsai of using “dirty tactics such as cheating, repression and intimidation to get votes, fully exposing their selfish, greedy and evil nature”.

“This temporary counter-current is just a bubble under the tide of the times. The basic pattern of cross-Strait relations will not change because of an election. Whether it is to curb ‘Taiwan independence’ secessionist activities or to benefit Taiwan compatriots, the mainland has a full ‘policy toolbox’,” it said.

Beijing regards the DPP as an “independence” party. Since Tsai took office in 2016, Beijing has refused talks or negotiations with her government. It has picked off Taiwan’s diplomatic allies in the world — there were 22 of these allies when she took office. Now there are 15. It aggressively bans Taiwan’s participation in international forums, even those on non-political subjects.

It has staged high-profile military exercises in the air and seas around Taiwan. Last August, Chinese fighter jets crossed the median line in the Taiwan Streets for the first time in 20 years. In September, a Chinese Twitter account believed to be government-backed said: “liudao buliuren” — meaning, “save the island but not the people.” In other words, an invasion was justified, no matter the human casualties.

Tsai’s victory means that this confrontation with China will intensify over the next four years — a military conflict can not be ruled out. But the decisive factor in her win was the protests in Hong Kong. In November 2018, Tsai had to resign as chairwoman of the DPP after its humiliating defeat in city and local elections. The KMT won 48.8 per cent of the popular vote, against 39.2 per cent for the DPP. Everyone expected the KMT candidate to win the presidency in 2020.

Even as late as last May, Tsai was telling foreign journalists she was not confident of winning the DPP nomination, let alone a second term.

Then, in June, protests began in Hong Kong against a proposed Extradition Bill, which would have allowed those wanted for crimes committed in the Chinese mainland to be sent there. On June 16, two million people took to the streets, the biggest protest in the city’s history.

If Carrie Lam, Chief Executive of Hong Kong, had quickly withdrawn the bill, she might have defused the anger. But she did not. It became increasingly clear that she could not make major decisions and had to wait for orders from Beijing. This made a mockery of the “one country, two systems” and “Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong” formula that is supposed to govern the city.

The protests have continued ever since and broadened into demands for universal suffrage, an amnesty for the more than 6,000 people arrested and an independent inquiry into what the protestors call police brutality.

Every week, people in Taiwan saw on their televisions Hong Kong people waving American, UK and Taiwan flags and confronting well-armed police. Lam did nothing to answer the demands of the protestors. All of this was manna from heaven for President Tsai. “Today Hong Kong, tomorrow Taiwan”, she warned people.

Ever since the 1980s, Beijing has said that this “one country, two systems” formula is the only future for Taiwan. President Xi Jinping repeated this in a Chinese New Year message in 2019. As the Hong Kong protests intensified, so opposition in Taiwan to the formula hardened. An overwhelming majority of its population now rejects this as their future.

Tsai was able to keep the news focused on the protests and away from subjects where the DPP is weak — fierce factional and personal fighting within the party, weak economic growth, no rise in wages, and property prices in the main cities out of range of middle-class people.

The protests were a fatal blow for KMT candidate Han Kuo-yu. Initially, he presented himself as the person who would improve relations with Beijing — as KMT president Ma Ying-jeou did between 2008 and 2016 — and improve the economy as a result. The KMT has governed Taiwan for all but 12 of the 75 years since the end of Japanese rule in 1945.

During a visit to Hong Kong in March 2019, Han Kuo-yu met Carrie Lam and Wang Zhimin, head of the Central Government Liaison Office and the most senior mainland official in the city.

On June 10, Han made a fatal error. Asked about a protest by one million Hong Kong people against the Extradition Bill the day before, he said: “I don’t know of the Hong Kong parade, I am not aware.” This was the response of a mainland Chinese official, not a candidate in a democratic election. Since then, his critics have painted him as “China’s candidate” in the election, an accusation that became more toxic with each month of the protests.

Tsai also benefitted from being the favoured candidate of the United States. In its “cold war” with China, Washington prefers the person more hostile to Beijing.

The result leaves Beijing with two options for its Taiwan policy. Either it can change “one country, two systems” and offer the people of Taiwan a different form of federation with the mainland. This is not going to happen.

The other is to accelerate the diplomatic isolation of Taiwan, cut it off from the international community and increase the military pressure with jet fighters, naval vessels and cyber-attacks. This is the option that Beijing will choose.

So, if the election was a victory for Taiwan’s democracy, it also heralds four years of increasing danger and conflict.