The Decibel - Why Taiwan’s election tests China’s authority

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

Taiwan, the east Asian country of 24 million people, is ramping up to a pivotal presidential election on January 13. Amidst rising tensions with China, voters are being asked whether their country should have a warmer relationship with Beijing or continue a hardline stance for Taiwanese independence.James Griffiths, The Globe’s Asia correspondent, explains why the answer to that question will test China’s strength and why another superpower is watching closely.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

2024 is shaping up to be the biggest election year in modern history. 64 countries, or roughly half of the world's population, are holding national elections. And one of the most significant ones is happening this weekend, in Taiwan. A big part of the election cycle there has been about how Taiwan navigates its relationship with China. The superpower wants to bring the island under its control, while Taiwan's independence movement has grown in recent years. James Griffiths is The Globe's Asia correspondent, and he's traveling through Taiwan ahead of the election. He'll explain what the results could mean for the stability of the region

and why not just China, but also the U.S. is keeping a close eye. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. James, thanks so much for being with us today. Thanks for having me. So James, you're in Taiwan right now on the island of Jinmen, and you're there because of this upcoming election. Can you just give us a sense of what the mood is like where you are? Well, it's like most elections in the last few days that things are starting to really heat up. We had the final polls and there won't be any more polling until election day itself. So it's kind of in that period where everyone has an idea of what's going to happen but no real certainty and the candidates are in a last-ditch effort to you know pull each other

down and make their case to the people and so the two main parties which is the DPP and the KMT are both attacking each other's various positions and we've seen a few scandals bubble up in the last week or so so you know it's getting it's getting pretty heated. And I think, you know, probably the whole of Taiwan will be fairly relieved when when the election is over and done with on Saturday. And we'll get into the players in this election in a little bit. But before we do, I want to get into what you're hearing from voters. Like what are voters saying, campaign officials? What are some of the things you're hearing right now? So with all Taiwanese presidential elections, one of the biggest issues is foreign policy, which in Taiwan means the relationship with China and also to a certain

extent, the relationship with the US, but really the relationship with China, which obviously is a big risk to Taiwan, given that China has vowed to seize Taiwan by force if necessary and forcibly reunify it with mainland China. And so each party has to kind of make a case for how they will handle that relationship and maintain the peace that has existed across the Taiwan Strait since 1949. But while that is an important issue, it is definitely not the only issue in this election.

And I think probably international readers and listeners would be surprised at just how secondary it is often in debates and in coverage, you know, to issues such as housing and youth and unemployment, which may sound familiar to Canadian listeners as problems that many countries share. So it is a, you know, to a certain extent, it's kind of a bread and butter election that you see in most of the world, but with obviously this China issue hanging over it. Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about Jinmen, where you are? What sets this place apart? Why did you go to Jinmen specifically? So Jinmen is the closest Taiwanese territory to mainland China. And by close, I really mean close. It's less than 10 kilometers from the city of Xiamen in southern China. And from a lot of Jinmen, you can see the Chinese coast at all times. And, you know, that proximity has meant that during the 50s, that Jinmen was bombarded by Chinese missiles

and artillery. It was the site of fighting during the Chinese Civil War. And it's seen as somewhere that were China to launch an invasion of Taiwan or even a more limited attack on Taiwan, that Jimen would be directly affected by that. And so it's quite a special place in Taiwan, because it's one of the most militarized places, but it's also one of the most kind of integrated with China because it's so close. It has much stronger links with China because mainland Taiwan is about 200 kilometers away. China's just across the water. Okay. And so this relationship with China and Taiwan, you said is a secondary issue, perhaps, but it's still an issue all the same.

So I want to talk about this relationship. And I think it's worth taking a bit of a step back and reminding listeners about this complicated relationship and history with China. So can you give us a brief overview of why this relationship between Taiwan and China is so contentious? the Chinese Civil War in 1949, when the defeated Kuomintang fled to Taiwan, the victorious communists who established the People's Republic of China have claimed Taiwan as part of their territory, part of their country, and they vowed to seize it by force if necessary. And so that threat has been hanging over Taiwan ever since, albeit that we haven't really seen any sustained fighting for many decades at this point and China has also said several times that they would want peaceful unification if that's possible and trying to bring Taiwan kind of closer to the mainland through trade links through cultural links and

like that with the idea that Taiwanese people would eventually decide to join China and in the 90s and maybe even into the 2000s that looked like a feasible option as China became this much more powerful country. It became a growing superpower and there was maybe an attraction to becoming part of China. But more recently and especially since crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, there has been sustained and mass opposition within Taiwan to any idea of unification. And the idea that the Taiwanese people, who have had a democracy for decades at this point, the idea that they would vote to become part of autocratic China is just impossible. And so that leaves us with a situation

where China either gives up on its idea of unification or it seizes Taiwan by force, or the third option, which often isn't included, is we just kind of muddle along in the current status quo, which sometimes sounds infeasible, but it's lasted for decades now. And there's no real reason to think that the status quo as confusing and sometimes tension causing as it is, there's no reason to believe that that couldn't technically last for more decades. And so let's bring it to today, because this election, of course, is very important to 24 million people in Taiwan, but it's also

being watched very closely outside of Taiwan. So why is this election so important? It's important because the current ruling party, the DPP, is seen as more what China would call pro-independence or separatist. They would argue that they defend Taiwan's democracy and autonomy. But under the DPP, there tends to be very high tensions with China. And that's been the case since the DPP was elected in 2016. And so the sense is that if there is another DPP government for the next four years, or even eight years, that that will increase tensions with China, and we'll see this kind of slow ramping up is that that will pull in the United States, which is Taiwan's most important, not official ally, but de facto ally, which provides military aid and provides economic aid to Taiwan and has several hundred soldiers on Taiwan at any given time doing training and things like that. So if there's an invasion of Taiwan that pulls in the

US, well, then we have the two world superpowers fighting a war. So, you know, that is a potential huge global conflict which could create not just disruption here in East Asia, but around the world. It would devastate the global economy. It would have effects on trade and potentially, you know, absolute worst, worst, worst case scenario is two nuclear powers fighting. So, you know, any conflict over Taiwan is deeply, deeply concerning. I want to talk about some of the main players and parties in this election to get sort of a sense of what's going on here on the ground, because they represent different and competing ideas around this unification question. So let's start with the Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP for short. What do they stand for? The DPP are the biggest of what in Taiwan is called

pan-green party. And green in Taiwan tends to refer to parties that support either full independence, so declaring some kind of independent country called the Republic of Taiwan, or greater autonomy or the status quo. And so the current DPP leaders, the current President Tsai Ing-wen and her Vice President Lai Ching-te, who is running for presidency now, they've both said that they believe Taiwan is already a sovereign independent country called the Republic of China, which has been called since the end of the Chinese Civil War. And so they argue that Taiwan is de facto independent, and they want to maintain that autonomy and Taiwan's democracy and freedom. The other main party, which has ruled Taiwan for most of its history is the Kuomintang, the KMT. And they are traditionally the kind of

unification party. They were the original governing party of the Republic of China before it was overthrown by the communists and they had to retreat to Taiwan. And historically, they wanted to reclaim China, as it were, and unify China under the banner of the ROC. Nowadays, what that tends to mean under a Kuomindang government is that they support better relations with China. And they would argue that that is the best way to have peace across the straits. And the DPP argue that that is kind of a slow encroachment of kind of Chinese influence on Taiwan. And so as we record this right now, which party is leading in the polls? So the polls have frozen in Taiwan. You can't poll past a certain date when you come into elections.

But before that blackout period started, the DPP was ahead, hovering around kind of 35 percent in the highest polls with KMT not too far behind. That is likely going to be enough in Taiwan's first-past-the-post system to give the DPP a victory. From the outside, and you mentioned this earlier, James, it does appear like the relationship with China is a major issue in the minds of voters. But what do we know? Is this actually the biggest issue on the ballot? I think it's correct to call it the biggest issue. It's just not the only issue. You know, it is the major foreign policy and, you know, China policy affects everything. It's the major domestic policy. It's, it's the major argument, it's the major difference between a lot of the parties. But a lot of people who support the DPP's approach to China, and that is a lot of Taiwan, you know, there is very little support for unification or, you know, kind of a

more considerate approach to China in Taiwan. A lot of those people may still vote against the DPP because of domestic issues. You know, this is an incumbent government that's been in power for the last two cycles. There's a feeling that they've kind of failed on certain issues, especially housing and youth unemployment. And so a lot of especially younger people may vote against the DPP despite agreeing with them on China. And Hong Kong has been a major factor in this because Hong Kong was once seen as a potential model for Taiwan. So when Hong Kong was handed over to Chinese rule in 1997, it had this model called one country, two systems, where it maintained a certain degree of democracy and autonomy, but was technically part of China and China handled its foreign affairs and things like that. That was explicitly seen at the time as a potential future model for Taiwan. That model has only become less and less attractive

to people in Taiwan to the point where even the KMT, the in theory pro-unification party, refuses to accept one country, two systems. And so since there's been a crackdown in Hong Kong in the last few years, that has really driven Taiwanese public opinion against any kind of rule from China, because a lot of people here feel that they can't trust China's promises to respect any degree of democracy autonomy that they currently have. And so this idea that China would give you know, give them any kind of freedoms is, you know, increasingly untenable. We'll be right back. I'm curious about China's stance on what's going on with Taiwan. What has Beijing said

most recently to indicate that they want power and control over Taiwan? So China has always said that it wants to quote unquote unify the country and bring Taiwan into the People's Republic of China. At times that has been framed peacefully, that you could have a Hong Kong style one country, two systems model for Taiwan. And at other times, China has said, you know, we will invade if necessary to force this. And even when China is being conciliatory, they tend to say, you know, we reserve the right to use force. And so in his New Year's speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the reunification of Taiwan and China was a quote, historical inevitability.

In his speech, Xi said that compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait must share in the glory of national rejuvenation. At the moment around the election, they're trying this carrot and stick approach, which is to threaten a potential invasion in future, but also show what a better relationship could look like maybe under the KMT. And that's, you know, better trade relationships, better people to people relationships and transport links and things like that. I'm curious about the role of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, because, you know, he has this strong man persona. So how much of this has to do with Xi and his messaging?

So Xi's grand project has long been national rejuvenation, which they've set various dates for China reaching certain goals and becoming the global superpower that it once was back in the Qing dynasty. And he has tied the unification of Taiwan and China very closely to this idea of national rejuvenation. And the fear there is, is that he set this goal for himself that he kind of might be forced into at some point later. And at the same time, he's also, you know, modernized the military, massively expanded China's military. And that's also seen as potentially preparing for some future war over Taiwan. Have we seen any actions from China, I mean, to kind of show these kind of strong man powers? Under Xi Jinping, and especially since the DPP was first elected in 2016, there has been extreme Chinese aggression towards Taiwan. They've massively increased the amounts of

aerial sorties. They fly Chinese planes buzzing Taiwanese airspace. They've several times staged huge military drills around Taiwan. They fired missiles into the waters around Taiwan. So this is a very, very aggressive stance that China has taken. And, you know, in recent weeks, we've seen a number of alleged Chinese spy balloons flying over Taiwan. Oh, the spy balloons. Exactly. You know, that's a far cry from how China's behaved in previous elections. It's fired missiles in the waters around Taiwan in the run up to previous elections and really took an aggressive stance. But some analysts have argued that that actually swung the elections against China's favor.

So they've maybe decided to take a softer approach this time. But the stance has been getting more and more aggressive, especially under the DPP. And the fear is that if the DPP candidate, Lai Ching-teh, is elected, as the polls suggest he will be, that China will get even more aggressive and that this could be spiraling out of control. The DPP's argument is that, you know, we're not the ones causing this and we actually want to talk to China. Lai has said that he would happily sit down with Xi Jinping and discuss these issues. But because China has this kind of hatred of the DPP and fear of them as what it sees as a separatist party, having those negotiations and tamping down tensions is quite difficult. There is, of course, a third major player in this geopolitical situation, and that's, of course, the United States. What, if anything, has the US said about this talk of unification? The US position is that the status of Taiwan is unresolved. It acknowledges China's claims to Taiwan,

but doesn't officially recognize them, but also only maintains diplomatic relations, official diplomatic relations with Beijing, while having a very extensive unofficial relations with Taiwan. The US has various guarantees that it's made to Taiwan historically about defending it militarily in the wake of an attack. It's sold huge amounts of weapons to Taiwan. It has some small deployment of soldiers here that do training. And the feeling is that if there was a conflict over Taiwan, the US will be pulled in. And because of that, the US pays very close attention to Taiwan and of course, to things like the election. If China is one side of the foreign policy issue in this election, the US is the other with all parties saying they will do everything they can

to maintain good relations with the United States. So both China and the US have a vested interest in seeing the results of this election play out in the way that they want it. How might both of these superpowers aim to influence this election? Like what are experts warning? The US always maintains that it doesn't take any role in foreign elections and doesn't want to interfere and doesn't want to influence them. But I think most people would agree that the US would favor a DPP win just because it's more predictable. It would be a continuity government that we've seen in the last eight years. The DPP vice presidential candidate is the former envoy to the US. The DPP has very strong ties in Washington.

But that's not to say that they wouldn't happily deal with the KMT. The KMT has made efforts to build relationships with Washington. So the US is, at least openly, they are just watching and listening and waiting to see the results as everyone else is. China, I guess, officially is doing the same. But we know that China does take a more active role in this. Taiwan has long accused China of trying to interfere with cyber attacks and with propaganda, both openly and secretly in the election. And we've seen various accusations that China has tried to interfere this time. Okay, James, I want to talk about the big picture here, because there's been parallels that have

been made between Taiwan and Ukraine. And that's because these smaller countries are being threatened by these superpowers, China and Russia. We know what Russia is doing, but is there a sense of what China might do? After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, there was a major fear in Taiwan that Taiwan could be next, that this was a breakdown of international norms against this type of action. And like you said, there are such obvious parallels between Russia, Ukraine and China, Taiwan. The reality of that war, though, I think has alarmed both Beijing and maybe reassured people in Taiwan, because obviously, Ukraine has managed to mount a much stronger defense than anyone expected at the start of

that conflict. And, you know, that's, I think, maybe had people second guessing what a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would look like, both in terms of the long term, you know, any kind of Taiwanese resistance, which would be at least as strong as Ukraine's, but also in the immediate term, that the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese military is far less battle tested and ready than the Russian military was, and has not fought a war since 1979, when they had a failed invasion of Vietnam. And to take that untested military and then launch what would be the largest aquatic assault in history, you know, dwarfing the D-Day landings by some degree, is obviously a huge risk, and one that wouldn't necessarily pay off. You know, Taiwan could not

fight China in some kind of, you know, like for like battle. But when it comes to defending the island, it is quite well prepared, it is rapidly militarizing. They've extended conscription. They are buying new weapons from the US and others. They are creating this situation, which is called porcupine Taiwan, which is the idea that Taiwan will just be too difficult and expensive to attack for China. And that's not just to mean that this would be a war that could drag on and be costly and be difficult, because a failure to invade Taiwan, a failure to seize Taiwan, you know, in a bloody stalemate that could result, that is often seen as a type of, you know, national shock and humiliation that could be the only type of thing that could really threaten CCP rule in China. James, thanks so much for being with us today. Thanks for having me. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.