Taiwanese voters swept the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) presidential candidate Lai Ching-te into power on Saturday in an explicit rejection of China’s warnings not to vote for him in an election Beijing framed as a choice between war and peace.
Current Vice-President Lai’s DPP, which champions Taiwan’s separate identity and rejects China’s territorial claims, was seeking a third term, unprecedented under Taiwan’s current electoral system.
Lai was facing two opponents for the presidency — Hou Yu-ih of Taiwan’s largest opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT) and former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je of the small Taiwan People’s Party, only founded in 2019. Both conceded defeat.
In the runup to the election, China denounced Lai as a dangerous separatist, saying that any moves toward Taiwan’s formal independence meant war, and rebuffed Lai’s calls for talks.
The number of disinformation and cyber attacks targeting Taiwan has exploded in the run-up to the country’s presidential election. Google alone has removed more than 60,000 fake news channels coming from China.
Lai and incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen reject China’s sovereignty claims over Taiwan, a former Japanese colony that split from the mainland amid civil war in 1949. They have, however, offered to speak with Beijing, which has repeatedly refused to hold talks.
Lai says he is committed to preserving peace and the status quo across the Taiwan Strait and boosting the island’s defences.
The opposition KMT, considered the more China-friendly nationalist party, had promised to restart talks with China while also bolstering national defence, and its leader promised not to move toward unifying the two sides of the Taiwan Strait if elected.
A third candidate in the race, Ko Wen-je of the smaller Taiwan People’s Party, or TPP, drew the support particularly of young people wanting an alternative to the KMT and DPP, Taiwan’s traditional opposing parties, which have largely taken turns governing since the 1990s. Ko had also stated that he wants to speak with Beijing, and that his bottom line would be that Taiwan needs to remain democratic and free.
Apart from tensions with China, the election largely hinged on domestic issues, such as the economy, housing affordability, a yawning gap between rich and poor, and unemployment.
It’s estimated that Taiwan’s economy grew just 1.4 per cent last year. That partly reflects inevitable cycles in demand for computer chips and other exports from the high-tech, heavily trade-dependent manufacturing base, and a slowing of the Chinese economy.