The ruling Democratic Progressive Party retained its hold on the presidency but lost its parliamentary majority in Taiwan’s January 2024 general election. Relations with China, which insists that Taiwan is its province, remained a key issue, although economic concerns also weighed on many voters’ minds. Perhaps as important as the result was the fact that another free and fair election with a vibrant, highly active campaign took place – something unimaginable in China. Taiwan continues to show the region that democratic elections and open civic space are possible. The wishes of its people to keep things that way must be respected.

Taiwan’s 13 January general election saw the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) win the presidency for the third time in a row. Following a rambunctious campaign, the results were eagerly awaited by the country’s circa 19.5 million voters – and by many people further afield. Perhaps just as important as the results was the fact that another free and fair election, packed with debate and public participation, took place – something unimaginable across the Taiwan Strait that separates the island nation from its much bigger, more powerful and deeply authoritarian neighbour China.

Democratic Taiwan

The origins of modern Taiwan date back to 1949. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won the civil war, the defeated nationalist government fled the mainland. Until the 1970s it was the Taiwan government that held China’s United Nations (UN) seat and enjoyed widespread international recognition. That shifted as China grew in economic and political power, and now almost all states recognise China rather than Taiwan.

Taiwan has never been part of Communist China, but that hasn’t stopped the CCP insisting on ‘reunification’, a position intensified under China’s Supreme Leader Xi Jinping. In 2022, Xi pushed through a change to the CCP’s constitution explicitly rejecting Taiwan’s claims of independence and told the army to strengthen its military training. That same year, the government published a paper stating that only ‘reunification’ could stop Taiwan being invaded by another country. Xi’s statement that the ‘problem’ of Taiwan couldn’t be ‘passed down from one generation to the next’ further raised the stakes.

The use of force can’t be ruled out, given that the annexation of Taiwan is Xi’s major piece of unfinished business. Some think he might want to get it done before his current term ends in 2028. Economic considerations are also at play – Taiwan manufactures over 60 per cent of the world’s semiconductors, the microchips used in so many things, and 90 per cent of the most technologically advanced kinds. It’s against this backdrop of rising threat that the election took place.

Democracy didn’t come easily to Taiwan. The country was under authoritarian rule, enforced through lethal repression, until 1975 and martial law remained in place until 1987. The first democratic presidential election came in 1996. But it’s since burgeoned into a thriving democracy. Free and fair elections have been consistently held every four years and the two main parties have both had spells in power and accepted electoral defeats. Current president Tsai Ing-wen stands down in May, respecting the two-term limit, another marker of good democratic practice.

The democratisation of Taiwan has gone far beyond elections. The country is now home to an active and enabled civil society. It’s Asia’s only country with open civic space, meaning that freedoms to organise, protest and express dissent are generally respected.

The China issue

For many years Taiwan’s ruling party was the Kuomintang (KMT), which successfully adapted to democratic politics after being the party of authoritarian rule. Of the two main parties, it’s the one that has historically advocated for warmer relations with China and opposed any move towards declaring independence. Out of power since 2016, in recent years it’s moved away from talk of unification and the concept of ‘one China with different interpretations’, which both its officials and those of the CCP once backed.

The DPP is less warm to China, but doesn’t go as far as calling for statehood. It’s widely understood that doing so would certainly trigger an aggressive response from China. But the DPP argues that Taiwan is in effect already an independent nation, making changes to the status quo unnecessary.

This position seems to broadly reflect the public mood: opinion polls consistently show that most people support the current situation, either indefinitely or for the time being, and few back either an immediate declaration of independence or unification with China. At the same time, polls indicate a generational shift, from most people identifying as both Chinese and Taiwanese to most identifying solely as Taiwanese. But parties that support full independence attract little support.

Voices from the frontline

Brian Hioe is one of the founders of New Bloom Magazine, an online magazine that covers activism and youth politics in Taiwan and Asia and the Pacific. Ahead of voting, he outlined some key issues at stake.

 

Taiwan’s elections consistently capture global attention due to the anticipation surrounding China’s response. Traditionally, Taiwanese voters opt for what they perceive as the safest choice in terms of safeguarding their hard-earned democratic freedoms. The overarching concern is to avoid actions that might trigger backlash from China.

There is a lot of dissatisfaction with the current government’s inability to address pressing economic issues. Young people’s salaries are very low, working hours are among the world’s longest and most people cannot afford to buy a house. We also have a declining birthrate and a growing older population.

Environmental issues, and particularly air pollution, also weigh heavily on voters. The question of Taiwan’s future energy needs is key, as a balance is sought between maintaining a stable energy supply and minimising pollution. There is heated debate around nuclear energy. Taiwan’s environmental movement is anti-nuclear, as is the DPP, unlike the KMT. There are concerns about what to do with nuclear waste. People are worried that the frequent earthquakes that hit Taiwan could cause a potential catastrophe, as happened in Japan in 2011.

Past elections also featured debate on culture-war issues such as same-sex marriage, which the DPP pushed for but the KMT opposed. But these have now taken a back seat to economic and environmental issues.

However, the defining matter remains the cross-strait issue – the question of what kind of relations Taiwan will maintain with China.

China’s persistent efforts to interfere in Taiwan’s political processes have resulted in recent arrests of people accused of operating in favour of China to influence the election, with efforts made to stiffen sentences for espionage. Ten military officials have, for example, been arrested in connection with these interference attempts.

China has tried to pressure Taiwanese civil society organisations (CSOs), particularly those focusing on cross-strait issues. Five years ago, a Taiwanese CSO worker was arrested in China on vague national security charges, in what seemed aimed at sending a warning to Taiwanese civil society not to meddle with China.

China has also tried to intimidate voters. In a recent example, a person who purchased a book on the possibility of a Chinese invasion received a suspicious phone call from someone impersonating a customer service representative asking them about it.

Following the election, China is expected to respond with intimidation tactics, possibly through military exercises, to signal its opposition to a new DPP administration. The intensity of these exercises may be influenced by China’s relations with the USA at the time.

 

This is an edited extract of our conversation with Brian. Read the full interview here.

Party politics

While the question of relations with China likely played a big part in many voters’ choices, that wasn’t the sole focus of the campaign. Like everywhere else, people also had everyday concerns on their minds. And just like everywhere else, many of these were to do with the economy, including inflation – low by global standards but with some high price spikes on basic items, poor pay and working conditions, unaffordable housing and corruption, with some blaming recent power outages and egg shortages on DPP mismanagement.

This was also a more unpredictable election than most, with the arrival of a credible third party on the scene, disrupting what’s normally a straightforward two-party race. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) competed in the 2020 legislative election but now entered the presidential race for the first time. It positioned itself as a centre-ground alternative, seeking to appeal to voters disaffected with the two established parties and to younger voters who might see the once-fresh DPP as the establishment and be seeking something new.

Despite this pitch, at one point it looked like the TPP would link up with the KMT. In November 2023, the two got close to announcing they’d run a joint presidential ticket. But they were unable to seal the deal, meaning that the opposition vote split.

Heightened competition made for a particularly energetic and noisy electoral campaign. There was an abundance of large-scale and sometimes raucous campaign rallies and stunts, but also  disinformation and concealed attempts at influence. Facebook, TikTok and YouTube were home to what was identified as a coordinated influence operation that began in March 2022, with fake accounts using common hashtags to promote the KMT and denigrate the KPP and TPP. China was suspected of being behind this, as it has been in the past.

There’s no doubt that China prefers to deal with the KMT rather than the DPP. Ahead of the vote a Chinese official warned Taiwan’s voters to make the ‘correct choice’. Ultimately, however, the split opposition enabled current DPP vice president Lai Ching-te to win the presidential race. But in the concurrent parliamentary election, the KPP lost its majority. Lai will need to strike compromises to govern.

Further steps forward on LGBTQI+ rights

The campaign also saw a couple of notable firsts on LGBTQI+ rights, another area in which Taiwan is an Asian pioneer, because civil society has been able to use open civic space to make advances.

Taiwan is the only Asian country where same-sex marriage is legal, and it has been since 2019. In May 2023, further progress came when a law was passed to guarantee full adoption rights to LGBTQI+ couples.

During the campaign, in October, Lai became the first presidential candidate to participate in Taiwan’s annual and long-established Pride parade, alongside 180,000 other people. The election saw further barriers fall, as a 30-year old DPP politician, Huang Jie, became the first out LGBTQI+ person to be elected to the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s parliament.

Challenges ahead

While Taiwan has open civic space, civil society still has some concerns. These include criminal defamation provisions that could be used to penalise dissent and bans on organised activities near some buildings, including the Legislative Yuan and courts. The right to strike is also limited. Civil society further points to limitations on the rights of migrant workers, who are subject to a system in which they’re forced to pay high fees to employment brokers in return for securing work in Taiwan. This has been the subject of several protests.

Taiwanese people are able to mobilise to demand change, a key distinction between Taiwan from China. People don’t take democracy for granted. They know how hard it is to build it and how easily it could be taken away. They’ve seen what’s happened to Hong Kong, its differences supposedly protected under the ‘one country, two systems’ rubric – which China once urged Taiwan to sign up to – now erased, its youthful democracy movement jailed or forced into exile, its civic space closed.

Taiwanese people have had to grow used to the once-rare but now frequent incursions of Chinese military jets into Taiwan’s airspace, and the increasing number of Chinese warship patrols and military drills.

They see Taiwan getting ever more isolated internationally, denied a say at global institutions like the World Health Organization even during the COVID-19 pandemic, while China’s economic persuasion causes the small number of states that once recognised Taiwan to switch their backing to China. Just two days after the election, in what may have been a deliberately timed move, Nauru was the latest to announce it had switched, leaving just 11 United Nations member states that recognise Taiwan.

China also lashed out by criticising other states that congratulated Taiwan on its successful exercise in democracy, characterising this as interference in its internal affairs.

More potential flashpoints can be expected. China’s pressure may intensify ahead of the May presidential inauguration as a way of encouraging caution from Lai, who on the campaign trail was already forced to downplay past statements of support for independence.

The ever-fluctuating state of China-US relations may influence what happens. For now, the USA is holding to its policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’, deliberately leaving the extent to which it might intervene unclear with the aim of deterring escalation on either side. Under a Trump presidency, however, who knows what might happen.

But Taiwan’s people shouldn’t be pawns in anyone’s power game. They have a voice, and they deserve to keep it.

OUR CALLS FOR ACTION

  • The government of Taiwan should commit to working fully with civil society to maintain open civic space and respect human rights.
  • The government should repeal criminal defamation provisions, roll back protest restrictions and ensure the right to strike for all workers.
  • The government of China should commit to refraining from any military action towards Taiwan.

Cover photo by Annabelle Chih/Getty Images