What Lai Ching-te’s Victory Could Mean for Taiwan’s Future
The Democratic Progressive Party, the pro-independence political faction that’s spent eight years funneling American weapons to Taipei, captures an unprecedented third consecutive term
Over the weekend, Taiwanese voters had a choice to make.
As they headed to the polls to select their next president, they could’ve opted for Ko Wen-je, the leader of the nascent Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), a political group established less than five years ago. With Taipei’s relationship with Beijing dominating most of the island’s politics, the TPP attempted to court voters with a broader discussion about issues like rising housing costs and low wages. By the time the polls closed, roughly a quarter of the electorate showed that they’d been listening and handed Ko 26.5% of the vote, a remarkably high total for a third-party candidate.
The other option at the ballot box was Hou Yu-ih, the Kuomintang (KMT) candidate who’d advocated for increased dialogue across the Taiwan Strait. The KMT is the main opposition party in Taiwan and is much more receptive to improving the island’s relationship with Beijing than its DPP counterparts.
In March, former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou [and a longtime member of the KMT party] even led a delegation to mainland China, in the first such trip by any former or sitting Taiwanese president since 1949.
“Instead of buying more weapons, it would be better to increase exchanges between young people of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait,” Hsiao Hsu-tsen, the executive director of Ma’s foundation, told The South China Morning Post at the time. “The more they are able to promote their friendship, the less risk there will be.”
This was a message that resonated with millions in Taiwan, but Hou also fell short, seizing about a third of the vote on election day.
Who would become the next president of Taiwan was clear long before the island’s precincts had concluded tabulating their results. As many had expected, Lai Ching-te won easily, capturing nearly 5.6 million votes and an unprecedented third consecutive term for the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
For months, both Hou and the CCP had depicted a Lai victory as a guaranteed trigger for inevitable conflict, with the Chinese government calling Lai the “destroyer of cross-strait peace”.
How Lai’s electoral triumph could ultimately impact the tensions in the Taiwan Strait remains to be seen. For now, the one certainty is that his win surely won’t ease them. The majority of the approximately 14 million Taiwanese voters who cast a ballot this weekend chose to keep in power the one candidate Beijing was desperately hoping would lose.
Serving as Tsai Ing-wen’s vice president since 2020, Lai has been publicly branded as both a “separatist” and a “troublemaker” by Beijing. The accusations are rooted in Lai’s well-documented history of enthusiastic support for establishing Taiwan as a sovereign nation.
“As I said before at the Tainan City Council, I am without a doubt a politician who supports Taiwanese independence. I will never change this stance no matter what office I hold,” Lai was quoted in 2017 as saying.
His professional ascent has – at least publicly – softened this stance. Today, Lai has accepted that the most practical political path forward is to avoid sparking a regional war by pursuing an internationally recognized separation.
Lai may have shed the openly pro-independence position he’d held just a few short years ago and has pledged not to alter the island’s geopolitical status, but many are still troubled by what his election could mean for the island’s future. Time and time again, Lai has maintained his intention to maintain the status quo. However, a quick review of the DPP’s close alliance with the West and militaristic impulses reveals why so many fear how an administration led by Lai could govern.
During President Tsai Ing-wen’s eight years in office, Taipei increased defense spending, beefing up its armed forces by swiftly accelerating weapons shipments from the US, which has armed the island for several decades. Taiwan is currently waiting on a $19.2 billion backlog from its American partners, orders which include 66 F-16s and 108 Abrams tanks.
In August, it was reported that Taiwanese troops even participated in multinational drills on American soil, with the island’s troops joining the Michigan National Guard in a series of exercises known as Northern Strike.
Last July, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by the vice president, in which Lai made clear his intention to continue to arm Taiwan to the teeth. In the essay, entitled “My Plan to Preserve Peace in the Taiwan Strait,” Lai highlights his focus on the need to “build up Taiwan’s deterrence.”
“Defense is the bedrock of our national security,” wrote Lai. “Under President Tsai Ing-wen, we have increased defense budgets, reformed conscription and the reserve system, and supported new practices and capabilities within our military. These measures reduce the risk of armed conflict by raising the stakes and costs for Beijing.”
The continued flow of armaments across the Pacific that such a commitment hinges on is what makes this stance so deeply problematic. Because Taipei’s insistence on fortifying its shores against Beijing’s forces relies on US weapons shipments, many fear that this relationship could someday produce a world war.
Numerous senior Biden administration officials, including the president himself, and myriad members of Congress have repeatedly promised to step in and defend Taiwan if a direct confrontation with Jinping’s forces were to break out.
This would inevitably necessitate the involvement of our European allies, as well as countries like South Korea, Australia, and Japan, prompting the likely entry of Russia and North Korea into the fray. This is a conflict that would swiftly domino and endanger the lives of millions of people.
American politicians and media personalities have gotten pretty good at regurgitating generic talking points about the importance of protecting democracy and freedom. Of course, US foreign policy is always rooted in geopolitical objectives, never humanitarian ones.
Aside from its ongoing desire to limit China’s further rise as a superpower, the US is also motivated by the role Taiwan plays within the global economy.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) produces approximately 90% of the world’s advanced chips which power things like smartphones, electric vehicles, and fighter jets, to name a few. Any conflict between Taipei and Beijing wouldn’t just wreak havoc on Taiwan’s economy but would also cause major supply chain disruptions that would impact the entire planet.
Because Lai is one of the most senior members of a party that’s spent eight years in power, his election alone won’t be the catalyst that suddenly pushes the region to war. Nevertheless, the island’s choice to keep the DPP in power only pours more kerosene on a powder keg already brewing in Asia.
His past sentiments about Taiwanese independence and commitment to continuing to increase the size of the island’s military are coupled with other noteworthy indications as to what type of president Lai might be.
As just one example, in July, Lai told a crowd of supporters that he aspired for the president of Taiwan to be able to someday walk into the White House, a presently taboo act stemming from the US government’s “One China” policy that acknowledges that the self-governed island is part of China. At the time, Lai cited trips to Washington made by leaders such as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, while noting that there was no reason for the leader of Taiwan to be treated any differently.
In September, David Zhong wrote the following for Responsible Statecraft on what a Lai victory could potentially mean for Taiwan’s future:
However, a third consecutive triumph for the DPP’s presidential bid led by one of the mainland’s least favorite Taiwanese politicians might lead Beijing to conclude that Taiwan’s public sentiment has irreversibly shifted in favor of formal independence. If so, the prospects for much greater Chinese pressure on Taiwan – perhaps even a coercive takeover – could increase considerably.
Within the DPP, Lai is seen as a political figure deeply aligned with pro-independence forces, as witnessed by the more extreme stance he took during his challenge to President Tsai in the DPP primary in 2019.
However, there is also strong support for Lai’s pro-independence stance in Washington, especially in Congress. A Lai victory in next year’s election would likely embolden support for Taiwan Independence in Congress and elsewhere and encourage him to alter President Tsai’s relatively cautious stance on cross-strait issues and adopt more assertive pro-independence policies, thus undermining Washington’s “dual deterrence” strategy.
Only time will tell what Lai’s presidency will bring.
For now, the one thing the people of Taiwan can safely bet on is that tensions in the region are unlikely to improve.
His party doesn’t speak for the majority of Taiwanese. There were two opposition parties (that favored working with Beijing) whose votes totaled a majority 60% of votes to the DDPs plurality of 40%.
Does it matter to Lenny that the people in Taiwan don't want to be controlled by the dictatorship in Beijing?
The republic of Taiwan has its own laws. The Taiwanese have their own elections, their own president, their own government, their own military, their own police, their own schools, their own hospitals, their own stock market - need I continue? Are they a country or not?
China isn't communist anymore other than in name, but it remains a dictatorship that few people in China like. Everyone knows the party is corrupt, rewarding its own, allowing them to build shoddy factories and buildings that easily fall in earthquakes, killing the people inside. They have had countless examples of explosions in fireworks factories, resulting in deaths, because safety laws aren't followed, because the Party takes bribes to ignore them. The corruption kills. Toxic waste in the factories is poured out on the floor, where former peasants walk and breathe in the fumes. The unhealth is immense. If elections were allowed in China the corrupt party would be voted away immediately.
But regardless of that, Taiwan is and remains a nation. Be honest enough to admit that. The Taiwanese don't want to be controlled by the dictator in Beijing. They deserve to be free from that control. And it is good that they are free from that control.
"But Washington! We can't approve of anything Washington supports!" That is the attitude of people as fanatic as the neocons, just in the opposite direction. People who will ignore what the Chinese government does, ignore that the Ethiopian government has killed and rahped tens of thousands of Tigrinye just recently - a new BRICS country must be praised and not criticized, and ignore that the dictator in Nicaragua held a sham election where the opposition leaders were arrested and banned from campaigning. Because - if Washington says one thing, then we must say another, right?
So, "Taiwan is not a country! Everyone agrees it belongs to China!" That's what we hear. The reason nations won't state the very obvious, that Taiwan is a country, is because they don't want to lose trade with the Chinese people, which the Chinese dictatorship would cut off in that case. But I hear Beijing apologists use this "argument" over and over again.