With more than 50 countries and territories around the world going to the polls, the 2024 election campaign kicked off with Taiwan’s elections over the weekend. With no seats in the United Nations and not recognised as a sovereign state by the overwhelming majority of the international community, it is no surprise that Taiwan’s elections are being closely watched. The elections are less about how the island of 25 million people will be governed internally, and more about how China and the US define the island and where they would like to see it in the future.
For the People’s Republic of China, the island of Taiwan is the mainstay of an unfinished national integration, while for the US it is a military ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ and a political-economic alternative to the communist mainland.
PRIMARY REASON: THE MULTIFACETED RESULT OF THE VOTE
The establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the US in 1979 was the result of a compromise over Taiwan that was subsequently (and unsurprisingly) violated by Washington. The historical background to this situation is the subject of another article, but today Beijing has repeatedly stated that it will build bridges with any country and would not hesitate to go to war for the sake of reunification with Taiwan. On the other hand, the outcome of the Taiwanese elections on 13 January suggests that, for the time being, the disaster scenarios will not come true, that the current positions of the parties across the Taiwan Strait will be maintained, and even that the island will not be talked about much in the short to medium term.
Such an assumption is made for two main reasons:
First, the election results were not to China’s satisfaction, nor were they significant enough to encourage the US and its allies. According to the official results, the pro-US Democratic Progressive Party, which won over 8 million votes (57 per cent) in the 2020 election, only managed to win just over 5 million votes (40 per cent) in the last election. The candidate of the opposition Kuomintang, Hou Yu-ih, received 4 million 671 votes, while the candidate of the Taiwan People’s Party, Ko Wenje, was preferred by 3 million 690 thousand voters. In short, the victory of the Democratic Progressive Party was self-inflicted by the divided opposition. Moreover, it is no secret that in order to consolidate the anti-Beijing vote, the DPP misrepresented the satellites launched by China as missiles and raised ‘false’ alarms across the country.
Although the Democratic Progressive Party declared victory, taking advantage of the opposition’s divisions and a series of controversial events, it lost its majority in the Legislative Yuan. The Kuomintang has 52 seats, the Democratic Progressive Party 51 and the People’s Party 8.
Such a situation will undoubtedly make Lai Cheng-te ‘think twice’. Indeed, Lai Cheng-te, a member of the New Wave, the hardline independence wing of the Democratic Progressive Party, said in a statement immediately after the elections that he was in favour of maintaining the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. However, the same Lai Cheng-te had referred to the island as an ‘independent state’ in his pre-election statements.
The illusion that the Democratic Progressive Party represents the overwhelming majority of the country’s will was finally shattered in Taiwan’s local elections. In the 26 November local elections, the Kuomintang won 13 out of 22 cities, including the capital Taipei, while the DPP won only 5.
REASON TWO: THE CURRENT COURSE OF CHINA-US RELATIONS
The second phenomenon that strengthens the argument that, contrary to expectations, the Taiwan elections will not lead to a rupture is the current dynamic in Sino-US relations.
The tensions, which culminated in the visit to Taiwan by the former speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, led to China closing its doors to the US after the ‘balloon crisis’, which went down in the history of international relations. To break the spiral of miscommunication with China, the White House sent US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing in June, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and climate envoy John Kerry in July, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in August.
As a result of these efforts, the US hosted first Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and then Chinese President Xi Jinping on 15 November. At the San Francisco summit, US President Joe Biden declared that they were not pursuing a Cold War or military hot contact, while the parties decided to set up working groups on trade and economics and liaison mechanisms at the level of defence ministries and field commands.
With the year 2024, diplomatic traffic continued to increase. This time, planes leaving China carried Liu Jiancho, head of the Central Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party, to the US. While Liu reminded his contacts that the Taiwan issue was the basis of Sino-US relations, the defence and trade delegations met in January in accordance with the decision taken in San Francisco.
It is doubtful that the US, which is more interested in de-risking than decoupling from China, will be willing to bear the cost of Taiwan. Given the multidimensional picture emerging in Taiwan, it is understandable that the US sent a relatively low-profile delegation to the island earlier this week, or that Biden’s statement that the US does not support Taiwanese independence. Nevertheless, it would not be surprising to see the US continue to sell arms to Taiwan and change course to consolidate voters as the November presidential elections approach.
CHINA WILL TRY TO WIN HEARTS AND ‘WALLETS’
After the Taiwan elections, China sent the message that historical reality, not the ballot box, will determine the island’s future, condemned US arms sales and sent an ‘election gift’ to the island by taking Nauru, one of the ‘handful of countries’ that recognises Taiwan.
Although China maintains its firm stance on Taiwan, it will focus on the strategy of ‘winning hearts’ rather than ‘flexing muscles’ as long as its red lines are not crossed in the coming period.
In his New Year’s speech on the eve of the elections, Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke of meeting with ‘patriots’ in Taiwan, without hinting at the use of military force if necessary. The Chinese Communist Party’s theoretical magazine Qiushi also published an article this week on Xi’s speech, which emphasised winning the hearts of people in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.
With 60 per cent of voters not voting for Lai Cheng-te and the Democratic Progressive Party losing 10 seats in parliament, Beijing will no doubt want to use the economy as a lever for peaceful reunification. In this context, a number of measures may be implemented in the coming days, such as making the Integrated Development Zone in Fujian Province across the island more attractive.
