Political Uncertainty in Taiwan Adds to U.S.-China Tensions, Microsoft start (Wall Street Journal), Mar. 30, 2023.
Story by Joyu Wang
Political tides have begun to turn in Taiwan, threatening to alter the island democracy’s relationships with both Washington and Beijing and reshape tensions between the world’s two superpowers.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen departed Taipei Wednesday on a trip that includes planned stops in New York and Los Angeles, part of an effort to push forward with her Democratic Progressive Party’s strategy of cultivating closer ties with the U.S. On Thursday evening in New York, Ms. Tsai was to be honored by the conservative Hudson Institute think tank, which advocates support of Taiwan, including by checking Chinese power.
Though favored in the White House and on Capitol Hill, the Taiwanese ruling party’s popularity at home has eroded in recent months, dragged down in part by economic struggles. The declining support has opened up an opportunity for Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, which favors friendlier ties with China.
Pointedly, Ms. Tsai’s predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, a senior member of the Kuomintang who served as president between 2008 and 2016, left this week on his own trip, with plans to visit several Chinese cities and the graves of his ancestors in Hunan province over 12 days.
When he landed in Shanghai on Monday, he became the first former Taiwanese leader to set foot on Chinese territory since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces fled to the island following their defeat by Mao Zedong’s communist forces in 1949.
“The people of both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to the Chinese nationality,” Mr. Ma said while paying tribute at the tomb of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Kuomintang who is widely regarded as the father of modern China, in the eastern city of Nanjing.
China’s Communist Party claims Taiwan as a part of Chinese territory, despite never having governed the island, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping hasn’t ruled out using military means to enforce that claim. Ms. Tsai’s efforts to align with Washington as a counterweight to Beijing have proven popular in recent years, in particular among younger Taiwanese who feel little personal connection to China.
The ruling party nevertheless suffered a series of defeats in local elections late last year over mostly domestic issues: rising crime, a slow postpandemic recovery, growing inequality and scandals involving allegations of both corruption and plagiarism. The party’s more than seven years standing astride the islandwide political scene might have also fueled a sense of fatigue, some experts say.
Now, it finds itself working to win back potential voters ahead of presidential elections early next year that could reset the island’s relations with China.
A Kuomintang victory could weaken U.S. foreign policy, which has sought to reinforce Taiwan as a democratic bulwark against China’s expanding authoritarian influence in the region. Similarly, any perception of wavering U.S. commitment to defending Taiwan could tip the election in the KMT’s favor, according to Yoshiyuki Ogasawara, author of several books on Taiwanese politics.
Since Taiwan’s first democratic elections in 1996, the two parties have traded power every eight years, he noted.
“On the one hand, a change of government helps prevent corruption and improves administrative efficiency,” Mr. Ogasawara said. “On the other hand, a change could also undermine the international support and understanding that Taiwan has gone a long way to achieve.”
Ms. Tsai’s approval rating tumbled below 41% in December from above 74% near the start of her second term in 2020, according to polling by the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University in Taipei. The center has yet to release polling data for 2023.
Ms. Tsai resigned as leader of the DPP following the party’s poor showing in November’s local elections, when it lost all but five mayoral and county races, making way for Vice President William Lai to take the reins of the party. Mr. Lai, who announced his intention to run for president earlier this month, is pushing the party to fix its shortcomings in time to make sure it can stay in power.
A DPP task force put together in the wake of its worst electoral setback in a decade in November, found the party had lost significant support among swing voters and young people. The task force noted many on the island struggled to make ends meet during the pandemic despite relatively strong overall growth.
The ruling party has traditionally drawn support from working-class voters, who were hit especially hard by the pandemic, said Fan Shih-ping, a political-science professor at National Taiwan Normal University. “If the government fails to stabilize the economy, it will affect the willingness of DPP supporters to vote,” he said.
Nearly 60% of respondents to a December poll by the National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center said they were dissatisfied with Ms. Tsai’s handling of the economy.
Maggie Lee, a 35-year-old entertainment executive who voted for Ms. Tsai in 2016 and 2020, said she is considering casting a blank ballot as a protest in January after pandemic restrictions took a heavy toll on her business.
“Before the pandemic, you could think about issues like national identity,” Ms. Lee said. “But when your life has been affected so much, your priority has become trying to make ends meet.”
The KMT has tied its own economic program to the resumption of cross-Strait trade—critical to many of Taiwan’s biggest companies—by positioning itself as the party that is willing and able to engage productively with Beijing.
Days after a meeting in the coastal city of Xiamen in January between KMT politicians and the head of Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, China said it would lift bans on imports of a several dozen Taiwanese products. In February, the KMT’s deputy chairman, Andrew Hsia, led a delegation to Beijing to meet with senior Chinese officials, including Wang Huning, a member of the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo Standing Committee.
Though voters won’t pick Ms. Tsai’s successor until next January, the election is already being viewed in Washington, Beijing and other capitals as pivotal to the geopolitics of the Taiwan Strait, the roughly 100-mile-wide body of water that separates Taiwan and China.
Mr. Lai, the likely DPP candidate, has less foreign-policy experience than Ms. Tsai and previously made comments that leaned toward supporting Taiwan’s formal independence from China—a position that Beijing considers a red line for military action. But he recently signaled he plans to follow the path Ms. Tsai has laid out in dealing with the U.S. and China.
Peifen Hsieh, a DPP spokeswoman, said that should Mr. Lai be elected president, “key members in Ms. Tsai’s crucial decision-making circles will definitely stay on.”
The KMT’s courting of Beijing highlights a dilemma the opposition faces as it looks ahead to the elections, according to political analysts. While it likely helps party chairman Eric Chu, a potential presidential candidate, shore up support inside the KMT, it could hurt him among general voters, many of whom remain wary of China’s intentions.
Mr. Chu, who hasn’t said whether he will run in 2024, would face a formidable potential challenger in Hou Yu-ih, a former police chief who lacks foreign-policy experience but enjoys popularity that cuts across party lines.
“We believe that Taiwan’s general public expects a responsible party that can reduce tension across the strait,” said Alexander C. Huang, the head of the KMT’s International Affairs Department, while rejecting criticism that the party risked falling into China’s orbit. “We have been skeptical about Chinese intentions for decades.”
Some political analysts said the visit to China by Mr. Ma, the former president, risked making the KMT seem too cozy with Beijing. Party spokesman Alfred Lin dismissed that notion, saying Mr. Ma’s tour was helping to ease tensions across the strait “in a time of great uncertainty.”