Taiwan: Two presidents, two trips, two paths to handling China

Visits last week by Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, to the United States and by former President Ma Ying-jeou to China highlight a sharp contrast between political visions for safeguarding the democratic island’s future as Taiwan’s 2024 election approaches.

President Tsai and her ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) favor preserving or expanding the autonomy of Taiwan’s 23 million people, in part by drawing closer to the U.S., Japan, and other democratic partners.

In two U.S. stopovers while in transit to and from an official visit to South America, President Tsai helped solidify Taipei’s security and economic cooperation with Washington in unofficial sessions with lawmakers and with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“We look forward to building ever stronger Taiwan-U.S. ties to defend our shared values of freedom and democracy,” Ms. Tsai tweeted upon returning to Taiwan Saturday.

Mr. Ma, meanwhile, a senior member of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party, struck a far more Beijing-friendly tone on his private historic visit to mainland China that ended Friday. Making the first visit to the mainland by any incumbent or former Taiwanese president, Mr. Ma reiterated the official KMT position that there is only “one China,” calling for more exchanges to ease tensions across the Taiwan Strait.

How these divergent DPP and KMT narratives resonate with Taiwan’s public is an important factor in Taiwan’s upcoming presidential election, scheduled for January 2024. With China’s aggressive military maneuvers raising the risks of conflict with Taiwan, experts say the election promises to provide a gauge of the political will of Taiwan’s population at a critical moment.

The growing emergence in Taiwan of a unique Taiwanese identity has emboldened the population to stand up for its freedoms, while also reflecting a pragmatic belief that preserving the status quo is the best way to uphold the island’s vibrant democracy.

“The vast majority of people are saying they prefer the status quo, likely because they just don’t want to go to war,” says Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program. “They see this has been safe. They don’t want to rock the boat.”

China is keen to sway the electorate in the direction of the KMT, which has traditionally been more pro-Beijing. The KMT chalked up key victories in local elections last November, although some recent polls have put the DPP in the lead in the upcoming presidential race.

Military pressure

China’s increasing pressure tactics – it launched fresh military exercises and dispatched dozens of aircraft around the island Sunday in response to President Tsai’s U.S. visit – are aimed in part at intimidating Taiwan’s population into supporting the KMT’s more accommodating stance, experts say.

“China gets the sense that it can influence the election a little bit if it makes Taiwan’s life more miserable … as a result of Tsai’s policies of cozying up to the United States,” says Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at RAND and adjunct professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. “But if you’re Beijing, you can’t push it too far.”

Indeed, amid growing preoccupation on all sides with military preparations for a possible war on Taiwan, the decisive factor in determining the island’s future remains the will of Taiwan’s people, says Ms. Glaser, co-author of the upcoming book “U.S.-Taiwan Relations: Will China’s Challenge Lead to a Crisis.”

“In many respects,” write Ms. Glaser and her co-authors, “the will of Taiwan’s people to resist Beijing’s pressure and preserve their political autonomy and democratic way of life is the center of gravity.”

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has claimed Taiwan as part of its territory since it took power in 1949. That year, Mao Zedong’s Communist revolutionaries prevailed in China’s civil war against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces, who fled to Taiwan and relocated the government of the Republic of China – the official name for Taiwan. But China’s Communist-led government has never ruled Taiwan.

In recent decades, as Taiwan democratized, public opinion has shifted steadily away from the goal of unification with China and toward the embrace of a Taiwanese identity, polls show.

Since the 1990s, surveys show a surge in the percentage of Taiwan’s people who identify as Taiwanese – from 20% in 1992 to 60% in 2022. Meanwhile, those identifying only as Chinese dropped from 10% to 2.7%.

Today, Taiwan’s people overwhelmingly support maintaining the current status of the self-ruled island, with more than 90% favoring the status quo compared with only 1% who want Taiwan to unite with the mainland as soon as possible, according to a March poll by Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council.

Responding to China’s policies

This “incredible shift in views on Taiwan toward China” is partly a reaction to Beijing’s hard-line policies, says Ms. Glaser. “The obvious authoritarian turn in China has been very unpopular and unwelcome in Taiwan,” she says. Taiwan “is a very free place, so what’s happened in China has been seen as creating a system that Taiwanese people don’t want to live under.”

As China’s appeals for unification have lost traction with Taiwan’s people, Beijing has adopted more hard-line pressure tactics toward the island, especially since Ms. Tsai was first elected president in 2016. It has cut tourism, restricted trade, and stepped up propaganda slamming the DPP as favoring independence.

Yet Beijing’s repressive policies – and especially its heavy-handed crackdown on Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests – helped solidify attitudes on Taiwan and hand Ms. Tsai and the DPP a landslide victory in the 2020 presidential race.

Indeed, research shows that as China’s coercion has mounted, resistance has grown among Taiwan’s people, who increasingly see China as hostile and threatening and so look for support from the U.S. and other advanced democracies.

“As PRC pressure grows … support for working with China diminishes” among Taiwan survey respondents, says Chong Ja Ian, associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

This trend continued even when China launched a massive military exercise and fired missiles over the island in August 2022 in response to a visit to Taiwan by then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Dr. Chong says. “People are … getting used to this intimidation by the PRC,” he says. “This coercive diplomacy toward Taiwan has a diminishing effect,” which could eventually lead China’s leaders “to rethink their strategy,” he says.

Indeed, Beijing has also used more subtle tactics, waging effective influence operations to boost support for KMT candidates and spread disinformation aimed at creating division and shaking the confidence of Taiwan’s people in their future.

China “has more traction when they try to create more confusion within Taiwan … more divisiveness in Taiwan’s politics,” says Dr. Chong.

War and peace

Like former President Ma, KMT politicians are presenting their party as the best equipped to ease tensions with China, while accusing the DPP of leading Taiwan toward war. “The KMT will bring you peace – we have a dialogue with China. … We will manage the relationship better,” is the message they spread, says Dr. Chong.

This KMT narrative was a factor leading Ms. Tsai’s administration to persuade Speaker McCarthy to meet her in the U.S. rather than travel to Taiwan, as he’d pledged to do earlier. Mr. McCarthy was the most senior elected U.S. official to meet a Taiwanese president in the U.S.

Taiwan’s current vice president, William Lai Ching-te, stepped forward last month to compete in the DPP presidential primary, as Ms. Tsai is barred by term limits from running again. Polls show Mr. Lai’s popularity increasing among voters, with a March poll finding that nearly 40% of voters prefer him over likely KMT candidates.

Meanwhile, as Taiwan’s presidential election approaches and DPP and KMT politicians jockey for position, Beijing could adopt a lower profile.

“As we look to January 2024, Beijing is no doubt considering how its actions might sway public views toward the DPP,” writes Margaret Lewis, a law professor and Taiwan expert at Seton Hall University School of Law, in an email response to questions. “This could counsel in favor of a lighter touch.”