Angel Jaramillo*
Last January 13, a sea of green and red flags was waved by a euphoric crowd in a square near the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) headquarters in Taipei. They celebrated the triumph of the presidential candidate, Lai Ching-te, and his running mate, Hsiao Bi-Khim. Indeed, the DPP had won the presidential election for the third time in a row. However, the winning party will not have a majority in parliament. The divided government may be good news for Taiwan, as the Kuomintang and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) – founded only four years ago – could prevent the DPP from irritating mainland China too much.
Two other candidates had a chance to succeed. On the one hand, Hou Yu-ih of the traditional Kuomintang Party was there. A former police chief and mayor of New Taipei City, Hou proposed friendly relations and greater cooperation between China and Taiwan.
On the other side was Ko Wen-je, former mayor of Taipei and founder of the TPP, who proposed a dialogue with Beijing, provided it was recognized that Taiwan could maintain its political system and cultural autonomy.
Domestically, Taiwanese are generally concerned about high inflation rates, low wages, and the high cost of housing. But the hottest issue concerns the relationship with mainland China. What does Lai’s victory mean? In the first instance the diplomatic estrangement of mainland China and Taiwan. Geopolitically, this means increased tension in the South China Sea and increased hostility from China against the island of Formosa. Let us remember that Beijing has ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan.
This fact will also mean that the United States will have to worry more about a possible Chinese attempt to annex Taiwan. Anyone who thinks this is beyond the realm of possibility has not given much thought to the implications of Putin’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In The Brothers Sun’s television series, the first scene is an aerial shot of Taiwan’s capital. Glittering, luminous skyscrapers, dominated by Taipei 101, a dark, slender structure that longs for the sky, show a postmodern, fantastical city. For anyone living in 1940s Taipei, the scene would not be so much futuristic as utopian: no one thought of a Taipei of skyscrapers.
Democratic and economically developed Taiwan is the product of an odyssey that began in the late 1980s and continued throughout the 1990s. The leaders of this democratic miracle were Chiang Chingkuo, the biological son of Chiang Kai-shek – the historical leader – and Li Denghui. It is no exaggeration to say that Denghui’s place in Taiwan is equivalent to that of Deng Xiaoping in the People’s Republic of China or Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore. Of the three nations, Taiwan turned out to be the most democratic. Its political system could be characterized as semi-presidential, although it differs from France’s and follows, to some extent, the U.S. pattern. Taiwan has become a politically pluralistic country, although, in recent years, two parties have tended to dominate the political landscape. In any case, Taiwan’s human rights record is not dismal. The country can boast of being the first Asian country to approve same-sex marriage in 2019.
In economic matters, Taiwan is the great colossus in semiconductor production, an industry-defining the present and future.
As Samuel P. Huntington has warned, Taiwan decided on its economic and political modernization but not its Westernization. In fact, Lee Denghui went so far as to say that Taiwan’s civilizational basis was based on Confucian values, which, in Taiwanese society, have been mixed with Buddhism and Daoism. The novelty of Taiwan is that it combines Confucianism with republican and constitutional liberalism.
Either way, the election in Taiwan is a victory for democracy in the center of the Asian world. Perhaps that is why, in Beijing, they are irritated.
*Angel Jaramillo Torres is an internationalist and political scientist. He is currently a member of the SNI, level 1, and an associate of the Mexican Council on International Affairs (COMEXI).
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