Taiwan goes to the polls on Saturday in a closely watched election that could reverberate far beyond its shores after years of growing threats from Beijing, which warned this week the island\u2019s future is at a \u201ccrossroads.\u201d <\/p>\n
The self-governing island of 24 million people will choose both a new president and parliament at a time of heightened tension with China, which under leader Xi Jinping has become much more powerful \u2013 and increasingly belligerent toward Taiwan. <\/p>\n
The boisterous election campaign, itself an illustration of Taiwan\u2019s vibrant democratic credentials, has been fought over a mixture of livelihood issues as well as the thorny question of how to deal with its authoritarian neighbor to the northwest. <\/p>\n
China\u2019s ruling Communist Party claims Taiwan as its territory, despite having never controlled it. And Xi has called Taiwan\u2019s unification with the mainland \u201ca historical inevitability.\u201d <\/p>\n
The results, expected to come Saturday night, will not only decide Taiwan\u2019s future, but could also reshape its relations with Beijing and pose a test to the latest efforts by the United States and China to stabilize rocky ties. <\/p>\n
Beijing, which routinely sends fighter jets and warships close to Taiwan\u2019s skies and waters, has framed the vote as a choice between \u201cpeace and war, prosperity and decline.\u201d On Wednesday, it warned Taiwan\u2019s voters to \u201cmake the right choice at the crossroads of cross-strait relations\u201d while railing against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has won Taiwan\u2019s last two presidential elections. <\/p>\n
In the final days leading up to the vote, candidates toured major cities around the island to stage nightly campaign rallies, featuring rock music, emotional speeches and the rhythmic chanting of slogans by large crowds. <\/p>\n
Three men are vying to succeed President Tsai Ing-wen, the island\u2019s first female leader. <\/p>\n
Over the last eight years, Tsai has raised Taiwan\u2019s global profile, strengthened its ties with democratic powers and pursued progressive policies at home, including making Taiwan the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage \u2013 though her party has also come under criticism over economic issues. <\/p>\n
Relations with China nosedived after Beijing cut off most communications with Taipei in response to her 2016 election win, and further stepped up economic and military pressure following her landslide re-election four years later. <\/p>\n
Tsai\u2019s current vice president, Lai Ching-te, is hoping to win a third term for the ruling DPP, which champions Taiwan\u2019s de-facto sovereignty and separate identity from China. That would be unprecedented in the island\u2019s nearly three decades of democratic history and represent a further rejection by Taiwanese voters of Beijing\u2019s strongarm tactics. <\/p>\n
Hou Yu-ih, a mayor and former police chief, is the candidate for the main opposition party Kuomintang (KMT), which traditionally favors closer cross-strait ties. A victory for the KMT would be welcome to Beijing and signal that voters might want to deescalate tensions. <\/p>\n
The third contender, Ko Wen-je, hails from the Taiwan People\u2019s Party (TPP), which he founded in 2019 to challenge the island\u2019s political duopoly. Ko also favors closer ties with China but says he will be less deferential to Beijing than the KMT. <\/p>\n
The race is tight. Final polls before the 10-day blackout period showed Lai had a slight edge over Hou, followed by Ko. <\/p>\n
Beijing, which openly loathes the DPP and Lai and favors a win by the KMT\u2019s Hou, has stepped up pressure on Taiwan ahead of the vote. <\/p>\n
It slapped sanctions on Taiwanese exports, flew spy balloons over the island, and showed off a new aircraft carrier, the Fujian, named after the mainland province closest to Taiwan. <\/p>\n
Taipei has also accused Beijing of ramping up disinformation campaigns and magnifying talking points favorable to China-friendly candidates as part of its election interference. <\/p>\n
China has long used a mixture of carrot and stick to woo Taiwan but over the last eight years it has mostly been stick.\u00a0That increasingly bellicose stance \u2013 and the country\u2019s authoritarian turn under Xi \u2013 has pushed Taiwan\u2019s public further away: Less than 10% now support an immediate or eventual unification, and less than 3% identify primarily as Chinese. <\/p>\n
A 33-year-old writer, who only gave his surname Tsang, said he cared the most about cross-strait relations and Taiwan\u2019s democratic values. <\/p>\n
But relations with China is not the only thing on Taiwan voters\u2019 minds. <\/p>\n
Despite the growing threats from Beijing, some people, especially younger voters, say China is not their biggest concern in this election \u2013 because they don\u2019t think the status quo will change in the short term anyway, despite Xi\u2019s rhetoric. <\/p>\n
Instead, they care more about the economy and livelihood issues, from Taiwan\u2019s notoriously stagnant wages to its unaffordable homes. <\/p>\n
Analysts say that is an area where the TPP \u2013 which advertises itself as a \u201cpragmatic\u201d \u201cmiddle-way\u201d party \u2013 has attracted young voters. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe leaders often say that our economy has improved. But we really don\u2019t feel that on a local level,\u201d a transport sector worker and father of two children surnamed Wu said at a TPP rally Thursday. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we see is that housing prices and cost of living have been going up, so people have to be really careful about how they spend their money,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
The whole island has been on the move since Friday \u2013 Taiwan doesn\u2019t allow absentee ballots, meaning voters must travel to their home counties to cast their ballots. <\/p>\n
Almost all high-speed train tickets leaving Taipei for the southern part of the island during daytime Friday and Saturday have been sold out days in advance. <\/p>\n
Some voters have also traveled back from overseas. <\/p>\n
Dan Chang, 36, who works in finance in Hong Kong, flew to back to Taipei on Friday. For him, the most important issue is Taiwan\u2019s sovereignty \u2013 he never trusted China, and Beijing\u2019s crackdown on Hong Kong has only strengthened his belief, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf Taiwan didn\u2019t have China as a neighbor today, I might not be so motivated to go back and vote,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n
Taiwan goes to the polls on Saturday in a closely watched election that could reverberate far beyond its shores after years of growing threats from Beijing, which warned this week the island\u2019s future is at a \u201ccrossroads.\u201d The self-governing island of 24 million people will choose both a new president and parliament at a time <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}