In dangerous times, Taiwanese voters seem to have opted for a subtle verdict. In the presidential elections on Saturday, the candidate Lai Ching-te has renewed the presidency for the pro-independence parties, thanks to 40% of the votes. Nevertheless, the remarkable result of its two opponents, the historic Kuomintang and the innovative People’s Party of Taiwan, has snatched the majority in the parliament, in the legislative elections held in parallel.
The president-elect, also known as William Lai, has already addressed his first statements to Beijing: “Taiwan is ready to talk with China, as long as it is on a basis of parity and dignity.” A conciliatory message that takes note of the bill paid for eight years of official incommunicado and its influence on the result.
“This campaign has shown the world the democratic insistence of the Taiwanese people. I hope it has been understood on the other side of the Taiwan Strait,” Lai added, before expressing that “only dialogue and exchange can reduce the risk of conflict.” Statements that, in form and substance, could correspond to their opponents, Hou Yu-ih and Ko Wen-je, who have already acknowledged defeat. More than 19 million citizens of the Republic of China were summoned to the polls, on a particularly sunny day. The participation, of 70%, would have been five points below that recorded in the last two appointments. Then the politician Tsai Ing-wen, from the same Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) as Lai, its vice-president during the last legislature, won the presidential elections.
The attrition in power would have lowered the enthusiasm of his supporters, who, moreover, four years ago, were highly motivated to vote, with the Hong Kong protests still very fresh.
On the other hand, this 2024 that is opening, the international context, with devastating wars in Ukraine – a recurring reference of the opposition – and Palestine, is a deterrent to any adventurism.
With more than 99% counted, the Kuomintang candidate, Hou Yu-ih – ex-policeman and mayor of New Taipei–, gets a third of the votes. While the People’s Party of the doctor and former mayor of Taipei, Ko Wen-je, the most attentive to the narrows of everyday life, would get one in four votes. Both postulate, with different intensity, the need to recover the dialogue with Beijing, in the first place to reverse the economic cooling.
Flights from Shanghai, Shenzhen or Beijing were full between Friday and Saturday with Taiwanese businessmen and executives mostly stubborn to cast a vote against independence, which they consider to be negatively affecting their businesses. In the financial district of Taipei, the Kuomintang has won, as in central and eastern Taiwan, as well as most of the smaller islands. The south-west, on the other hand, is the stronghold of the pro-independence parties, who also take first place in many of the urban concentrations.
The fact is that the average real Taiwanese salary, a modest 1,350 euros, has been falling for three years. The minimum wage, which is growing slowly, barely exceeds 800, despite high rent prices in the cities. The economy of Taiwan, former Asian tiger, grew by 1.42% last year. The social elevator is broken and many young people dream of a job in Japan or the United States, although not a few end up finding it in the People’s Republic of China. Also, the accusations of corruption against the PDP, launched by the Kuomintang, would not have managed to decide the result.
Washington and Beijing are following the elections in the self-governing territory very closely. Neither capital will be entirely satisfied, nor entirely unhappy. As much as the Chinese Communist Party has for weeks referred to Lai as a “dangerous” subject, almost as much as its vice president, the former de facto ambassador to the US – born in Japan to an Anglo-Saxon mother and herself a former citizen of the United States – Hsiao Bi-khim.
The same Friday afternoon saw the meeting at the White House of the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, with a high representative of the Chinese Communist Party and, at another time, with an envoy from Japan. Many Taiwanese like to see themselves as an independent country – without giving up the treasures of four thousand years of Chinese dynasties that Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek took from Beijing, but the reality – de jure and de facto – is that is. At the close of this edition, the detailed composition of the Parliament was not yet known.
