Reuters World News - What you need to know about the Taiwan election

Episode Date: January 6, 2024

Taiwan’s voters head to the polls in a hotly contested election. In this special episode of Reuters World News, we look at why China's shadow looms large over the vote and how the election poses challenges for the United States, regardless of the outcome. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Taiwanese heads to polls this week in a hotly contested election. In this special episode of Reuters World News, we look at why China's shadow looms large over the vote. And the challenges the election poses for the United States, regardless of the outcome. I'm Ben Blanchard. I'm the Reuters Bureau Chief for Taiwan, and I'm based in Taipei. I'm James Pompfret. I'm a special correspondent. And I'm based in Hong Kong. I'm Michael Martina. I'm a correspondent. I'm a correspondent. with Reuters and Washington, D.C. I cover U.S. policy towards China.

I'm Tara Oaks in Liverpool. And I'm Christopher Walgesper in Chicago. Let's look first at Taiwan and its regional importance in Asia. So I'm joined now by Ben Vlandchard and James Pompret. Thank you both so much for joining me. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good afternoon. So firstly, Ben, could you just set the scene for us?

What exactly are these elections happening in Taiwan? There's actually two elections. It's both the presidential and the parliamentary election. So they're held once every four years. There are three main contenders for the presidency. There is the current vice president, Lai Chinga, from the ruling Democratic Party. There is Hoyoi, who's from the largest opposition party, the Guamendang. And then there's also the former Taipei mayor, Coenza, from the quite small but still are significant Taiwan People's Party. Why are people viewing these elections in Taiwan as particularly significant to kick off a year? So these elections are happening after a four-year period where China, which, of course, claims Taiwan as its own territory, has really ramped up its political, economic and especially military pressure against Taiwan to try and assert those sovereignty claims. So over the last year and a half or so, we've had two rounds of major Chinese war games near Taiwan. Obviously, there was the one after then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei.

So there are a lot of tensions around Taiwan at the moment. There is a lot of concern about what might happen in the future about how Chinese President Xi Jinping may continue to put pressure on Taiwan to try and get them to accept Chinese rule. China has been offering Taiwan a one country, two systems model of autonomy. So very similar to what Hong Kong has. But unfortunately for Xi Jinping, this does not enjoy really any support in Taiwan. It certainly doesn't enjoy any support from the main political parties. And basically, it's almost impossible to find anybody here who actually accepts this.

James, that one country two systems, that's what Hong Kong has right where you're based. How does that work in practice? It means basically that China has the overarching sovereignty over a place. but to some degree, China will allow a different system to run in parallel. So, for example, in Hong Kong, there's two systems. That means that Hong Kong can have its own rule of law, its own common law system, which is different from the system in China. It also has, in theory, things have changed a little bit in Hong Kong over the past

couple of years under the national security law, but it should mean that citizens in Hong Kong enjoy rights and freedoms, including a free press, the freedom of assembly, that are not allowed in mainland China. So that's how it works. But of course, after the crackdown in Hong Kong over the past couple of years under the national security law, the kind of credibility of this one country two systems model, it's been tarnished quite substantially in the eyes of the Taiwanese public. So what are some of the main candidates, the main personalities views on China? How nuanced is it? So four vice president lies. So the DPP's candidate is currently the vice president in Taiwan. He is hated by China because China views him as a dangerous separatist. It thinks that he wants to

establish a Republic of Taiwan and draw a clear distinction with China. Lai has said repeatedly on the campaign trail that he does not plan to change the status quo in the Taiwan's strait and does not plan to change Taiwan's name. So Taiwan's name, and I appreciate this can be confusing for an international audience, Taiwan's name is actually its official name is the Republic of China. So that's the name of the government that fled to Taiwan in 1949 after they lost the civil war with Malthadong's communists. And Mao, of course, established the People's Republic of China.

Lai has repeatedly offered talks with China, so his door is always open, but these are talks that have to happen on the basis of equality and dignity. China has rebuffed those. The KMT, the Guamandang, they were the ruling party at the time in 1949 that fled to Taiwan. They traditionally want a close relationship with China. They do, however, vehemently deny being pro-Beijing, and they constantly have been complaining on the campaign trail that the DPP has been trying to smear them as being Chinese patsies. It is also significant that both parties say that ultimately the future of Taiwan can only be decided by Taiwan's 23 million people.

So if China are branding the DPP as dangerous separatists and say they won't have talks with them, what happens then if a DPP win has China indicated anything? So in the run-up to the election, China has made very clear, and officials have said this on numerous occasions, that they view this as a war-and-beast election, and they've told the Taiwanese people that they have to make the correct choice. Now, they've not actually directly come out and said who you should vote for, but they clearly do not like the DPP at all. As to how China reacts, it doesn't really matter which party, which of the three presidential candidate wins. The general consensus, is that China's pressure on Taiwan will continue. China will not abandon its goal of what they call reunification with Taiwan. The debate in Taiwan on the campaign trail about China has been getting quite bitter. There are a lot of accusations flying about who is pro-China, who is smearing who is being pro-China, who is a separatist, who doesn't respect Taiwan's constitution. It's certainly ratcheted up a notch from previous presidential elections that I've covered. And I believe this is

my fifth Taiwanese presidential election that I've covered. So there's a very obvious change in the atmosphere from the previous election. And in terms of this Chinese pressure, there have been allegations that this have taken various forms in the run up to the election. James, I wondered if you could walk us through your reporting about this Matsu religion and the allegations of pressure from China there? Yeah, so one fool that China has long used is the so-called United Front influence sort of operations. So what these are is basically clandestine attempts to influence sort of societies outside of China. So we did a story specifically on what China is doing to try to influence grassroots religious networks in Taiwan. And,

we focused on one particular religion, a folk belief in Taiwan called the Mazu Sea Goddess. And what we found is speaking to security sources and through obtaining classified government documents is that China has been deepening its connections with these Taiwanese religious networks. And you've got to bear in mind that Taiwan is massive, that religion is massive in Taiwan. and there's almost a temple on every street corner. So these kind of temple and religious networks, they form a natural kind of web, if you like, of influence for China to try to infiltrate. How does this work in practice?

You've talked about infiltrating temples, but what exactly does that mean? So there's an estimated 10 million followers of this Mazu folk religion, and that's about 40% of Taiwan's population of 23 million. So it's a massive potential network of people in all areas, all counties, all islands across Taiwan. Under Taiwanese laws, it's illegal, actually, for these kind of religious groups to be too explicit in their political views. So what we've been seeing is more subtle messaging. So we've obtained recordings, for example, of monks chanting in these. very sort of ornate Taiwanese temples with incense going and sort of gilded Buddhas. And they're

talking about war. They're talking about Taiwan not being driven to become an island of battlefields or an island of military arsenals. So that kind of subtle messaging or these pro-B Beijing narratives that sort of reinforce their desire for a change of government, what we're seeing at the moment is a kind of percolation of these pro-B Beijing narratives into the religious space. Now, let's talk chips as they're so big in Taiwan's economy. Tell us about chipmaker, Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing co, or TSM in these elections. Now, as for the role of TSMCs, so massive Apple producer supplier, world's largest contract chipmaker, it hasn't really been mentioned on the campaign trail. It was mentioned sort of in passing on the

at the vice presidential debates, where the KMT candidates essentially implied that Taiwan is, the government is sort of encouraging TSMC to go and invest overseas and build these factories. Overseas, because it may be too dangerous to build in Taiwan. That is actually something that the TSMs, or the government has said, and TSMC has said, well, you know, it's not true. We are, TSMC is investing overseas because it's for customer demand, is building these factories in Japan, Arizona, and is planning one in Germany. and that the majority of TSM's manufacturing will remain in Taiwan,

and certainly the most advanced chips are going to continue to be made in Taiwan, but absolutely in the back of everyone's mind, of course, there's always going to be the concern that if there really is a war in the Taiwan straight, then inevitably global chip supplies are going to be impacted. How concerned are international investors about what's going on in Taiwan? So the Taiwanese stock market is actually going gangbusters. It's performed extremely well. Last year, I think the Thai-X of the benchmark index actually like surpassed Hong Kong's Hengsing Index for the first time. This is something that has

been used on the campaign trail by the ruling party, by the DPP, saying, look, under us, the economy has done so well that the stock market has boomed. Investors, international investors certainly are mostly focusing on the outlook for megatrends like AI. This is powering the chip stocks here. How foreign investors react after the election, of course, it depends on what China does, whether or not China decides to stage any other kind of military provocations. We don't know, for sure, what China is going to do, whether or not they're going to do that. Generally speaking, though, the people in Taiwan and I think also the investment community, they're pretty used to this saber-rackling from China. There has definitely been an increase in concerns about risk

about investing in Taiwan. But generally the government says, you know, actually foreign investment in Taiwan is at record highs. We're still getting all the big companies want to do business with us and stuff. But that concern is something that the opposition party, the KMT has seized upon. So earlier this week, the vice presidential debates of the KMT's presidential candidate essentially said foreign investors, finances get in touch with me and say, we're not going to invest in Taiwan. It's too dangerous. It's going to be war. This is something that really upsets the DPP. and they say that this just simply isn't true.

And for your domestic voter, your man on the street, how are they feeling, is there a big range of opinion on China and that military threat? Taiwan has lived under the threat of Chinese invasion since 1949. This is something that people are very well used to here. So during the war games that we had by China over the last year and a half of stuff, there's no sort of sense of panic in Taiwan about it. people are quite sort of, I think a lot of people probably at the time didn't think that China was immediately going to rush over and invade us. They're obviously big practical problems to China

actually carrying out an invasion here. For the man on the street, it is China is not the only issue being discussed on the campaign trail. There's a lot of other stuff. There's issues about energy security in the sense that we've had some fairly major power cuts in Taiwan in the last four years. There are issues about whether or not the three presidential candidates have been involved in illegal property deals. There's been a lot of backwards and forwards about that. A lot of mudslinging has gone on with that issue. For Kerwengir, the former Taipei mayor from the Taiwan People's Party, he's been very successful in attracting young supporters because he talks about bread and butter issues like the high cost of housing and why salaries are not increasing

fast enough. So it's not only a China election and it's certainly not fair to say that this is purely a China election. At the end of the day when Taiwanese people get to the ballot bogs, there are, of course, other issues they're going to consider. But China really is a very dominant part of the campaign. And actually, as we get closer to election day, the rhetoric about China from the candidates has really ramped up. What are the views within Taiwan about future interaction with the United States? The United States is obviously Taiwan's most important international backer and, of course, armseller, despite the absence of formal diplomatic relations, the US government does not formally recognise Taiwan's government. US influence is quite

obvious in Taiwan. Taiwan has a large backlog of weapons orders, very high-tech weapons orders, that it's due to have delivered from the United States over the next three to four years. I think you can say generally speaking, people are pretty pro the United States here. The question mark, of course, has always been, would the United States come to Taiwan's aid in the event of war? So there's always been a strategic ambiguity from the Americans there. The Americans are bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, but they are not bound by law. There's no treaty. There was previously a treaty that existed when they had diplomatic relations.

It doesn't exist anymore. So the United States is not treaty bound to come to Taiwan's eighth. This is not a sort of NATO-like situation. So that is really a big unknown as to what would happen with that. But the United States has all said repeatedly that their policy is that they oppose using force to change the status quo around Taiwan and that any resolution or any agreement between Taiwan and China needs to come peacefully. And it needs to essentially have the support of Taiwan's people. This is a pretty mainstream public view in Taiwan and a political view as well.

As our colleagues in Taipei and Hong Kong prepare to cover this landmark contest, our Reuters foreign policy team is also gearing up in Washington, D.C. Michael Martina has been covering U.S.-China for more than a decade. Hi, Michael. Thanks for joining me. Hi, good to hear from you. So what will the U.S. be watching for in this election? Well, I would say that this is a major first test. in 2024 of the Biden administration's policy towards China in some ways. The Biden administration

is hoping to stabilize ties with China, and this election has the potential to throw a monkey wrench in those plans to stabilize ties. And that really depends on how it goes and which party eventually takes power in Taipei. Is the Biden administration going so far as to say that they have a preferred candidate here? No, the U.S. administration has been, been very careful not to weigh in. They say they'll ready to work with anyone who wins the election and they're adamant that they're not looking to interfere or put their foot on the scale in any way. That said, behind the scenes, individual U.S. officials may have a difference of opinion about what they see as in the best interests of the United States. So how could this

play out for the U.S.? Well, in theory, it's sort of a double-edged sword in some ways another DPP administration would represent some sort of continuity, at least over the past eight years, in terms of U.S. unofficial ties to Taiwan. And that means that the candidate, La Chingda, would likely pursue or has promised to pursue similar policies to the current president, Tsying Wen, from his own party. And if there was a KMT administration, as you said, they tend to favor closer ties to China. And with increasing tensions between the U.S. and China, that could alter the strategic dynamics in the region. Hmm.

How so? If China starts to react more aggressively, if they don't like who wins this election in Taiwan, what would be the response from the U.S.? Well, the U.S. is keen to lower the temperature. And if a new DPP administration comes in led by Lai Chingda, who is perceived in Beijing as a separatist, then it's almost certain that China would seek to escalate a military population. assuring or military activities, drills and such toward Taiwan, toward the island.

And that, of course, would put increased strain on U.S. China relations. But in some ways, increased military activity, that's big business for U.S. arms dealers, right? Right. That is one of the questions that remains to be seen and how this election will play out. Basically, there's hope that the TPP will pursue continuity with their defense policy if they come into a new term under Lai Chingda. That would mean theoretically an adherence to what the United States wants to see, which is sort of increases in what you would call asymmetric defense spending. That's mobile, relatively cheap equipment that couldn't be immediately taken out in any conflict with China.

And so the DPP has been pursuing that type of defense policy. And the hope is that if they remain in power, that would continue. And Lai Chingda has pledged to sort of continue the tie. administration's policies in that regard. The KMT, on the other hand, it's an open question. I don't think the U.S. administration is willing to write off their defense plans yet, but I do think that there are probably, on a private level or behind the scenes, concerns that a KMT with closer ties to China might sort of limit that defense preparedness pursued by Taiwan military forces. Now, Taiwan's not the only place heading to the polls this year. How will the election in Taiwan play

into the rhetoric in the U.S. election later this year? A major policy question for the United States and any administration and power here in the U.S. would be how they would respond to a potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait. But there's open questions about what that means in terms of U.S. military or U.S. forces actually being deployed to fight for Taiwan in the event of a conflict. And so that's a major policy question that could be part of election dynamics here. And there's, I would say, bipartisan consensus in the United States to be tough on China, but how that plays into a potential conflict with China over the Taiwan straight varies depending

on who you talk to. And whether or not the American people would support sending U.S. troops to fight for Taiwan is an open question. I think probably these are dynamics that aren't really being openly discussed by candidates. And that's part of what the U.S. has long adhered to as a sort of a strategic ambiguity about whether or not they would get involved. Thanks to Ben Blanchard, James Palmfrey, Michael Martina, and everyone who's covering the Taiwan elections this year. Reuters World News is produced by Jonah Green, David Spencer, Kim Vannell, Tara, and myself. Our senior producer is Carmel Krimmins.

Our executive producer is Lila Decretzer. Engineering and Sound Design by Josh Summer. Don't forget to like and subscribe on your favourite podcast player and tune in for our 10-minute daily headline show every weekday.