Taiwan’s election results are in, and voters chose Lai Chiang-te in a three-way race as the candidate who best represented what they’re looking for in a leader — that is, the status quo.
Lai, the current vice president and head of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, declared victory Saturday with just over 40 percent of the vote, crowding out his opponents, Hou Yu-ih of the Kuomintang (KMT) and Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party. It’s the first time in Taiwan’s democratic history that a political party has won a third term in office — and Lai has repeatedly told voters he’ll preserve outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen’s policies to preserve Taiwan’s democratic system and its sovereignty. While we don’t know what China’s response will be or when it will happen, there is expectation among some China experts that it will be “assertive”.
Though Taiwanese voters have a variety of concerns — including economic and social priorities — the primary question in a presidential election is how each candidate will manage relations with China, which claims Taiwan as its own. Though Lai is not specifically calling for independence from the mainland, both his predecessor’s stance and some of his past comments in favor of independence have gotten him branded a “troublemaker” by Beijing.
The Chinese Communist Party has harbored the hope that Taiwan, where the nationalist Kuomintang fled following the Chinese civil war in 1949 and 1950, would unify with the mainland and accept CCP rule. Lai’s win means that goal — at least by peaceful means, under the island’s own volition — is still quite far away, if it is to happen at all.
During Tsai’s eight-year tenure, Taiwan asserted its independence from the mainland by strengthening its relationship with the US, to the ire of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Though the US was already Taiwan’s main security partner, more symbolic acts like former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s…
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