Renegade Province

Taiwan votes on Saturday. HKFP have a team covering the election. (Evidence here of how clean the campaign is.)

Why is it important? Stock answer from Bloomberg…

War over Taiwan would have a cost in blood and treasure so vast that even those unhappiest with the status quo have reason not to risk it. Bloomberg Economics estimate the price tag at around $10 trillion, equal to about 10% of global GDP — dwarfing the blow from the war in Ukraine, Covid pandemic and Global Financial Crisis.

…Taiwan makes most of the world’s advanced logic semiconductors, and a lot of lagging edge chips as well. Globally, 5.6% of total value added comes from sectors using chips as direct inputs — nearly $6 trillion.

Taiwan is also Asia’s most vibrant democracy. To give an idea of the complexity of the island’s history: did you know that the first Fujianese settlers started arriving after parts of the aboriginal population were more-or-less pacified by… the Dutch? After a brief period as a province of the Manchu Qing dynasty, the Japanese took it over and did the usual railways/schools/exploitation colonial thing. The post WWII KMT were, if anything, harsher rulers, but eventually allowed free elections in the 1980s. 

The DPP likes to say there is no need to declare independence because the country is already independent. That was a psychological as much as constitutional shift – a realization that, after democratization, the ROC was an empty shell with something different living in it. Today, even descendants of the KMT-era Mainland immigrants are discovering and developing a specifically Taiwanese consciousness. China would ideally like the KMT to win, but Beijing’s canny hearts-and-minds team can always be relied upon to give the DPP and Taiwanese identity a boost (cue spy balloons,missile tests, PLA bomber incursions and NatSec trials in Hong Kong). In the Covid-Ukraine era, Taiwan has also enjoyed a growing profile in the West.

Let’s say it’s more interesting than Hong Kong elections these days.

A Guardian editorial applauds Taiwan’s democracy…

For many voters, their biggest gripes with the DPP are low wages, high housing costs and poor public services. Mr Lai’s good fortune is that they don’t think much of the alternatives. The KMT’s Hou Yu-ih and third candidate Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s party tried to cut a deal but ended up in a humiliating public spat instead. Mr Ko, who initially attracted people disenchanted with the DPP but unwilling to back the KMT, has proved erratic and unimpressive.

Whatever the outcome, Taiwan’s election should be applauded. As authoritarianism advances across much of Asia, its vigorous debate and free and fair elections are a beacon for a better way of doing things.

Beijing has made it clear that it would dish out punishment for a third DPP term … a political pathway to unification looks still more remote since the crackdown in Hong Kong.

A WSJ editorial…

The common theme is the desire of Taiwan’s voters to preserve their democracy even as they debate how. They understand the stakes after witnessing Hong Kong’s fate. Beijing has proven with its crackdown on freedom in that territory that “one country, two systems” really means the end of democracy. The Communist Party will always impose its own system.

If Mr. Lai wins as expected, Beijing is likely to go into blustering overdrive as it always does when Taiwan voters refuse to cooperate with the Party’s will. Commentators may present such a vote as a provocation…

The affront to the Party isn’t Mr. Lai’s policies, and Taiwan’s voters won’t have stoked tensions with Beijing by electing him. The problem is that Beijing can’t tolerate Taiwan’s example of a thriving Chinese-speaking democracy in which voters settle political differences at the ballot box. If a conflict breaks out in the Taiwan Strait, this will be why. And Taiwan’s voters know it as they head to the polls.

From several weeks ago, a New Statesman correspondent (and former Portuguese minister) looks around as campaigning gets underway…

Slowly but inexorably, the US has modified its position on Taiwan. It once committed not to challenge the concept that Taiwan is part of China, but that was before China became a peer rival, one aiming to replace American global hegemony. Today, even a peaceful reunification with the mainland has begun to seem intolerable to Washington. What makes the present moment so dangerous is that the US is not the only actor to feel uncomfortable with the fragile understanding agreed between Mao and Nixon half a century ago.

The Taiwanese officials I spoke to during my visit believe that Xi Jinping has unilaterally modified the status quo over Taiwan. As made clear in Xi’s speech on Taiwan in January 2019, China now affirms that the status quo is in fact a status quo of irrevocable movement towards reunification…

…I am told that in the meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in Bali in November 2022, the Chinese president said that China reserved the right to use force if the Taiwanese did not make a genuine effort to bring about China’s reunification. This was an entirely new position and, in the words of someone with direct knowledge of the Bali meeting, “it freaked the American delegation out”.

The BBC on the KMT’s difficult balancing act…

Another risk is that it is not clear whether a KMT government would necessarily be able to appease Beijing and guarantee peace.

“The KMT believes that it can get Beijing to promise restraint and stick to it. Looking at China’s position on Hong Kong, I’m less sure about Beijing’s willingness to commit to anything,” said Ian Chong, a non-resident scholar at Carnegie China.

“If KMT wins, maybe temporarily Beijing will ease off. But ultimately they want control of Taiwan, either through economic dependence, or show of force and intimidation.”

This also represents a problem for the KMT in the long term. With each generation, the gulf widens between what voters want for Taiwan’s relationship with China, and what the KMT has stood for.

New Bloom on Beijing’s Taiwan narrative…

…Taiwan has lived under Beijing’s constant military threat of “reunification.” However, Taiwan is often portrayed by Chinese propagandists as a “troublemaker” capable of destabilising the Indo-Pacific region or making China “upset about everything we [Taiwan] do, about our existence,” as Taiwan’s ex-ambassador to the United States Hsiao Bi-khim noted. Taiwan’s independence, be it a political appeal or an objective reality, is provocative to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP’s mouthpieces have effectively convinced numerous international observers to discourage Taiwan’s quest for independence and characterized Taiwan’s autonomy as an affront to the Chinese people.

CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping and his predecessors have consistently stressed the importance of the “Taiwan question” to the Chinese nation and the necessity of unification. In a recent interview, former Chinese ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai, described the Taiwan question as a “life-or-death question for China” with ”no room for concession.” Chinese officials and commentators often invoke the “will of 1.4 billion Chinese people” when discussing the criticality of the CCP’s historic mission to integrate Taiwan.

New Bloom on the extent of Hong Kong’s influence on Taiwan’s election…

…Taiwan always sees Hong Kong as a “counter-factual” of unification with China. Since its handover in 1997, Hong Kong has been the PRC’s showroom of the “one country, two systems (1C2S)” model as a possible Cross-Strait unification arrangement for Taiwan. A democratic and autonomous Hong Kong under 1C2S would give Taiwan a prospect that Taiwan can also remain democratic and autonomous under the PRC’s unification arrangement … The 2019 protest … raised Taiwan’s dire concerns over Hong Kong’s autonomy and sent out a strong signal that questioned KMT’s compromising attitude towards China. It finally crashed the craze of Han Kuo-yu and saved the DPP from its ebb in the 2020 general election.

But in the coming days, Hong Kong is not much of a focus.

AP talks to Hongkongers’ about their involvement…

As Taiwan’s presidential election approaches, many immigrants from Hong Kong, witnesses to the alarming erosion of civil liberties at home, are supporting the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

An article on Chinese identity – and KMT links – among Taiwanese gangsters, from Shanghai’s Green Gang to the Bamboo Union, with reference to a Netflix series I haven’t seen…

We can … see how the Chinese Nationalists might have self-justified violence against native Taiwanese — and how the need to counter threats such as these may have given rise to, or sustained the need for, native Taiwanese gangs as well. 

On Taiwan culture: Clarissa Wei (author of the Made in Taiwan food book) on Japanese culinary influence – as seen in bento boxes on sale at Taipei Main Station.