By Eryk Bagshaw and Daniel Ceng
Taipei: Taiwan’s government has won an unprecedented third term, sending former doctor and Tainan mayor Lai Ching-te to the presidency and cementing tensions with Beijing for the next four years.
In a rebuke of the opposition Kuomintang’s (KMT) call for closer ties with China after almost a decade of military threats and economic coercion, voters backed Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) campaign for greater sovereignty for Taiwan.
Taiwan’s next president Lai Ching-te celebrates his victory on Saturday. Credit: Daniel Ceng
“We are telling the international community that between democracy and authoritarianism we are standing side by side with democracy,” Lai said in his victory speech after greeting thousands of supporters in downtown Taipei on Saturday.
Lai pledged to continue standing up to threats from Beijing. “We will not turn around or walk backwards,” he said. “We are determined to safeguard Taiwan from continuing intimidation and threats from China.”
Chinese air force planes and navy ships harassed Taiwan’s air and sea space in the days leading up to the vote, in a campaign that coupled military threats with grey-zone activities, including a torrent of misinformation aimed at unseating the DPP which it warned was taking the country “ever closer to war and decline”.
The Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan but still claims the democratic island as its own after it split from the mainland following the end of the Chinese civil war.
Canberra and Washington watched the vote closely on Saturday after counting began at 5pm local time. Lai took an early lead in the more heavily populated western coastal areas and never looked like losing as traditional KMT strongholds in Taipei fell the DPP’s way.
By 8pm local time his lead extended to close to a million votes and Lai’s KMT rival Hou Yu-ih had conceded and congratulated Lai on his victory. Lai had secured more than 40 per cent of the vote to the KMT’s 33 per cent. The third party, the Taiwan People’s Party, had won 26 per cent of the vote in the first past-the-post system.
“We have to be united, united for Taiwan,” Hou said. The former police inspector warned the escalating tensions between China, Taiwan and the United States was putting residents at risk, particularly in the south of the country where fighter jets are a feature of daily life.
“We have to make sure the people in southern Taiwan feel safe and stable,” he said.
Kuomintang presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih on Friday.Credit: Daniel Ceng
Foreign officials in Taipei who were not authorised to speak publicly said they expected Beijing to make their displeasure over a Lai victory known, with military threats escalating ahead of the scheduled inauguration in May.
On Saturday, eight Chinese warplanes and six navy ships passed through Taiwan’s south-western air defence identification zone. They followed 15 fighter planes on Friday.
Lai’s victory has already put his relationship with foreign governments in Beijing’s crosshairs after years of hostility with his DPP predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen.
The DPP’s win secures Tsai’s legacy after eight years in office, during which her popularity soared after China’s crackdown in neighbouring Hong Kong and years of resistance to an increasingly aggressive Beijing, which has vowed to unite Taiwan with the mainland by force if necessary.
Lai, who was Tsai’s vice president, said he would try to pick up the phone to China to replace “confrontation with dialogue”, but it is unlikely Beijing will answer after freezing all formal diplomatic contact with the DPP after Tsai’s first victory in 2016.
China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, warned in an opinion piece published in The Australian on Friday that any “miscalculations” in Canberra’s ties with the new Taiwanese government would see the Australian people “pushed over the edge of an abyss”.
Lai Ching-te (centre) campaigns for the Democratic Progressive Party earlier this month.Credit: Daniel Ceng
A spokesperson for Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Saturday that Canberra would continue to build its unofficial relationship with Taiwan. The Australian government does not recognise Taiwan as an independent country, but it maintains economic ties with the democratic island that has become Australia’s seventh-largest trading partner.
“It is important that everyone respects the outcome of democratic elections,” the spokesperson said. “Peace and stability is in all our interests. Australia does not want to see any unilateral change to the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.”
Alex Chan with his wife and his daughter outside a polling station in Taipei. Credit: Daniel Ceng
Despite the victory in the presidential vote, Taiwan will have a minority government in the lower house for the first time in two decades. The DPP lost youth votes to its rival Taiwan People’s Party [TPP] after a campaign that targeted at young people and promised them economic growth while stabilising tensions with China.
As polls closed on Saturday, Alex Chan emerged from a polling station in Datong with his seven-year-old daughter Annie and his wife Cheng Wen-yen after voting for the TPP.
“I’m worried about her safety,” said Chan. “I want to keep her away from the frontline.”
Younger Taiwanese workers also said they had been worn down by years of talk about conflict with Beijing.
“They need to stop using the idea that Taiwan is dying,” said 26-year-old sales assistant Emma Ling.
The DPP, which legislated same-sex marriage in 2019 and fostered a reputation as a leading progressive government in Asia, became more predictable in Tsai’s second term as president, and leaked youth votes to its rival the TPP, which has come from nowhere to become a threat to the centre-left government.
“They need to be more radical,” said 27-year-old Jason Li after voting for the TPP in downtown Taipei.
Taiwan People’s Party supporter Jason Li in downtown Taipei. Credit: Daniel Ceng
TPP leader Ko Wen-je said his four-year-old party had taken the fight to the two major parties that have dominated Taiwanese politics for the past three decades.
“We proved to the world that Taiwan has a party apart from the DPP and KMT. We are positive for the future democracy of Taiwan.”
The task of blunting the TPP’s challenge will now fall to Lai as he takes the DPP into a history-making third term. Lai ran a campaign based largely on continuing Tsai’s legacy, but he will need to do more to pull in young voters if he is to see off the TPP’s threat in four years time.
For Beijing, Lai’s win is the worst-case scenario, culminating in a repudiation of its push for unification by a candidate who in 2017 described himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence”.
Worshippers pray at the Taipei Xiahai Chenghuang Temple after voting in Saturday’s election. Credit: Daniel Ceng
The comments infuriated the Chinese government. The uneasy truce between Beijing and Taipei, known as the “status quo” acknowledges China’s claims to the island, while allowing Taiwanese officials to continue governing without declaring formal international independence.
Outside the Xiahai Chenghuang Temple shrine in central Taipei on Saturday evening, hundreds of Taiwanese came to pray after casting their votes. More than 70 per cent turned out for the vote this year, making Taiwan one of the highest-ranking voluntary voting constituencies despite no postal, absentee or early voting system.
One worshipper TC Li said he prayed “for a smooth 2024”. The 25-year-old said it was his duty to vote because the future of the country was at stake.
“War is only a matter of time,” he said. “If the KMT or TPP won, our sovereignty could have disappeared.”
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