Re-election of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)

News Mondays – Robin Parisi

On January 11, 2020, the current President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) was resoundingly re-elected to a second term, with the highest vote total ever achieved by a candidate since the introduction of universal suffrage in 1996. Furthermore, her party (Minjindang) managed to retain its majority in parliament. Her main opponent, Han Kuo-yu of the Kuomintang—who had waged a divisive campaign and taken a resolutely conciliatory stance toward Beijing—failed to unseat her as president or win a majority in parliament. 

Between 2000 and 2008, Chen Shui-bian broke, for the first time since the Nationalist government’s exile to the island, the Kuomintang’s monopoly on politics in the Republic of China. Eight years later, Tsai Ing-wen became the second president that the Democratic Progress Party brings to the island of Taiwan. During her first term, she undertakes numerous reforms, such as a comprehensive overhaul of labor law in a more liberal direction, or the National Languages Development Act which aims to promote the island’s indigenous languages and grants the right to communicate with the government in any of the sixteen languages thus recognized—a right that may seem basic to us in Switzerland, but which remains an exception, even in Europe.

Of this human rights-based policy promoted by the Minjindang (literally: “Party of the People Moving Forward”), the only thing that has reached us is the long legislative and judicial saga surrounding same-sex marriage.

More than the re-election of the current government, it is the manner in which it occurs that stands out in a political landscape plagued by the issue of relations with China—just as politics in northern French-speaking Switzerland is plagued by the Jura question. Every election brings its share of pro- and anti-mainland rhetoric, and here again, while Han Kuo-yu proposed a vaguely defined economic rapprochement with Beijing, Tsai Ing-wen chose a firm stance in her response to Xi Jinping’s remarks, in which he warned Taiwanese voters that the island would return to the control of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by force if necessary.

In fact, Tsai Ing-wen and her party advocate a hardline policy toward the PRC and do not recognize the 1992 Consensus (the «One China» principle). The newly re-elected president quickly reaffirmed this foreign policy stance by stating that the island did not need to declare its independence. “We are already an independent country, and we are called the Republic of China (Taiwan).”

On the other side of the strait, as Hong Kong is engulfed in unrest, Beijing could do nothing but condemn a victory achieved through «cheating» and lambast the positive reactions and warm congratulations the United States extended to the re-elected president. The key question now is to what extent the well-known ingredients of geopolitics in the South China Sea will come into play.

Taiwan, although officially recognized by only about fifteen minor states, is de facto independent, but cannot permanently alienate its communist big brother solely because of its economic dependence. The Republic of China is just one of many links threatening to break in this region rife with unresolved conflicts, and it is important for the West to remember this democratic state on China’s doorstep and not to forget the nearly twenty-four million Taiwanese, as it did with Hong Kong.

Write to the author: robin.parisi@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: Wikimedia CC 4.0