Taiwan’s president re-elected as voters back tough China stance

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen defeated two challengers in Saturday’s election — pro-China Han Kuo-yu of the rival Nationalist Party and James Soong of the smaller People First Party.

AP

Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s president, looks on during a news conference at the Presidential Palace in Taipei, Taiwan, on Saturday, Jan. 5, 2019.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has won a second term, signaling strong voter support for her tough stance against China.
Tsai defeated two challengers in Saturday’s election — Han Kuo-yu of the rival Nationalist Party and James Soong of the smaller People First Party.
Han told supporters in the southern port city of Kaohsiung that he had called to congratulate Tsai on her victory.
Voters chose Tsai’s tough stance against China over Han’s arguments for friendlier ties with Beijing, which considers independent Taiwan a renegade province to be brought under its control, by force if necessary.
China’s communist leaders have taken an especially hard line against Tsai since her 2016 inauguration, infuriated by her refusal to endorse its claim that Taiwan and the mainland belong to a single China. 

Her victory will likely deepen that deadlock and ratchet up pressure from Beijing.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen appeared headed for a landslide victory and a second term on Saturday with more than 70% of precincts reporting election tallies.
Results from the Central Election Commission showed Tsai, with 58% of the vote, holding a healthy lead over her closest challenger, Han Kuo-yu of the Nationalist Party, who had 38%. 

A third candidate, James Soong, had 4%.
The mood was jubilant at the headquarters of Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party in Taipei, the capital, with supporters cheering as her tally climbed. 

At a gathering in Kaohsiung, where Han is mayor, it was much grimmer, with some wiping away tears.
Taiwan has developed its own identity since separating from China during civil war in 1949 but has never declared formal independence. 

Beijing still claims sovereignty over the island of 23 million people and threatens to use force to seize control if necessary.
“I hope every citizen can come out and vote,” Tsai said after casting her vote in Taipei. 

“You should exercise your rights to make democracy stronger in Taiwan.”
Han voted in Kaohsiung, where he is mayor.
For many in Taiwan, months of anti-government protests in Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous Chinese territory, have driven home the contrast between their democratically governed island and authoritarian, communist-ruled mainland China.
President Tsai portrayed the election as a chance to protect Taiwan’s democracy.
“Let us tell the world with our own votes that Taiwanese are determined to defend sovereignty, determined to guard democracy and determined to persist in reforms,” she said at a rally late Friday.
The Nationalist Party’s Han has said Taiwan should be more open to negotiations with China, in contrast to Tsai, who has dismissed Beijing’s overtures. 

The Hong Kong protests have undermined support in Taiwan for the “one country, two systems” approach Beijing has championed for governing both that former British colony and Taiwan.
Fears of Chinese interference in Taiwan’s politics and an uptick in the economy helped Tsai regain an edge after a dire electoral setback for her Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, 14 months ago.
“The reason why I vote for her is for upholding the value of Taiwan’s freedom and democracy and that should not be affected by the other side of the strait (China),” Lucy Ting, a college student, said at Tsai’s rally on Friday.
The pro-Beijing Nationalists have struggled to find candidates who can fire up their pro-China supporters and win over young Taiwanese who increasingly favor the DPP.
A second term for Tsai is expected to draw more diplomatic, economic and military pressure from Beijing on the island, in a continuation of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s campaign to compel her administration to endorse its myth that Taiwan is a part of China.
Tsai has refused to do so, maintaining that Beijing has no claim over Taiwan, although her government has repeatedly called for the reopening of talks between the sides without preconditions.
Since its transition to full democracy beginning in the 1980s, Taiwan has increasingly asserted its independent identity from China even though it is not recognized by the United Nations or any major nation.
The island of more than 23 million people exercises all the roles of a sovereign nation, issuing its own passports, maintaining its own military and legal system and serving as a crucial hub in the global high-tech supply chain. 

Reelected Tsai will face challenges in trying to reform the government and economy and push through unpopular cuts in generous civil service pensions.

Taiwan's citizens battle pro-China fake news campaigns as election nears

Contest is in effect a referendum on the future of the nation’s relationship with China
By Lily Kuo and Lillian Yang
Protesters against Taiwan’s pro-China KMT presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu during a protest in Kaohsiung.

Citizen groups in Taiwan are fighting a Russian-style influence and misinformation campaign that originated across the strait in mainland China with just weeks to go before it votes for its next president,
Taiwan goes to the polls on 11 January to decide between two main candidates, incumbent president Tsai Ing-Wen of the Democratic Progressive party (DPP) under whom ties with Beijing have become fraught, and Han Kuo-Yu of the Kuomintang party (KMT), which advocates closer engagement with China.
The contest is in large part a referendum on the future of Taiwan’s relationship with Beijing, which sees the independent nation as a renegade "province" that one day must return to the fold.
Han is Beijing’s favoured candidate while Tsai’s party has been campaigning on the slogan: “Resist China, Defend Taiwan”.
In a televised debate with her rivals for the job on Sunday, Tsai said China’s “expanding ambitions” were the biggest threat to its democracy. 

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen.

Citizen groups in Taiwan say the openness of one of the freest societies in Asia is being used against it by groups in China to wage an online disinformation campaign, made more potent by their shared language, Mandarin.
A recent study by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found that Taiwan was the most exposed to foreign dissemination of false information.
False reports include claims Tsai’s doctorate degree was fake or that Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong kicked an elderly man when he visited Taiwan in October and met members of the DPP.
“China has multiple ways of pushing misinformation. We’ve found that content mills are no longer simply producing fake information. More and more, they are manipulating opinions,” said Jarvis Chiu, senior manager for the Institute for Information Industry, which has been assisting government efforts to prevent disinformation.
According to Chiu, an army of trolls will leave thousands of comments under a candidate’s post or a news article, shifting the focus of the debate.
Fake social media accounts also share pro-Beijing content or inflate the number of likes such content gets.
“Subliminal attacks” include repeatedly searching for one candidate’s name to influence search algorithm results.
“China won’t give up this practice. It will only increase and because it is non-military, it won’t get much global attention,” Chiu said.
The uncertain status of Taiwan, functionally independent but not internationally recognised, has been an issue in every campaign since direct elections were introduced in the 1990s following decades of martial law under the KMT.
This year, the question of how Taiwan should deal with Beijing looms even larger after years of increasingly strident rhetoric from China.
On Thursday, China sailed its new aircraft carrier, Shandong, through the Taiwan Strait in a move critics described an effort to intimidate voters.
Months of witnessing Beijing’s inflexible response to protesters in Hong Kong have cast even more doubt on the city’s “one country, two systems” framework, once touted as a possible model for Taiwan.
“There’s a sword hanging over everyone all the time,” said Shelley Rigger, a professor of east Asian politics with a focus on Taiwan at Davidson College.
“It’s exhausting to know that you’re being threatened and that the entity that is threatening you is getting more and more powerful all the time.”
In an attempt to push back against the campaign, citizen watchdog groups are manning social media, debunking rumours and trying to trace questionable content back to its source.
Prosecutors have been charging those who spread disinformation.
The party in office is trying to pass a law that would prohibit support from foreign “infiltration sources” to a political party.
“Taiwanese people have only just started understanding what is happening. It’s still the very beginning,” said Summer Chen, of Taiwan FactCheck Center which works on debunking disinformation on Facebook.
“It is a crisis and all of Taiwan needs to be researching this.”
A series of snappy Youtube tutorials educate viewers on the nature and methods of disinformation warfare.
“Taiwan has become the main laboratory for information warfare from China. If China wants to practice its methods, Taiwan is the starting point,” Puma Shen, who runs DoubleThink Labs, which monitors how false information, explains in one of the videos.
Those working on the issue say it is difficult to definitely say these attacks originated in China or link them to Chinese state actors, which makes the work of raising awareness harder.
“I believe that there is cooperation with China, but how much China knows, how much of this is from the Chinese government or people in Taiwan who are pro-China, we don’t know,” said Vivian Chen, a recent graduate studying medicine from Taipei.
China’s efforts to influence events in Taiwan stretch a long way back and go beyond online information warfare, to include traditional media, incentives for citizens or businesses who cooperate with China, group trips and donations to temples and other grassroots organisations.
Last month when Chinese defector Wang Liqiang detailed ways he had been instructed to interfere in Taiwan’s midterm elections in 2018 as well as the upcoming race, few in Taiwan were surprised.
“The story was not as shocking in Taiwan as it was in other parts of the world,” said Lev Nachman, a PhD candidate at the University of California, Irvine, studying social movements and focusing on Taiwan.
“It is not news to Taiwanese people that China has been co-opting local organisations for political influence.”
Observers say it is unlikely efforts to influence voters will affect the outcome of the race, where voters will also choose representatives for the legislature.
According to polls, Tsai is ahead of her rival, helped by months of protests in Hong Kong and concerns about Beijing, and an improved economy.

China Is Sabotaging Itself in Taiwan

The logic of politics in the Xi Jinping era makes a softer line untenable, even if it’s having the opposite of the desired effect.

By Richard McGregor

China has a lot at stake in getting its favored candidate across the line in Taiwan’s presidential election in January, so it’s strange that Beijing is doing so much to sabotage Han Kuo-yu’s chances. Without a change in its approach, the Communist Party risks making the already difficult task of winning over the self-governing island next to impossible without force.
Over the past year, Beijing has single-handedly revived the electoral prospects of its political adversary, incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party. 

At the turn of the year, Tsai’s approval rating was a miserable 24%. 

Now polls show her with more than 53% support versus about 31% for Han, whose Kuomintang is the natural ally of Beijing. 

That nationalist party retains deep ties to the mainland as the former government of China until it lost a civil war to the communists and fled to Taiwan in 1949.
China’s increasingly hardball tactics have helped to drive Tsai’s resurgence, along with its call for Taiwan to return to the fold on the same terms as Hong Kong. 

In January, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping urged unification talks on a “one country, two systems” model, saying the political impasse could not be passed from generation to generation and reiterating that Beijing wouldn’t promise to refrain from using force if Taiwan refused to discuss terms. 

Tsai’s support leaped after she rejected the overture. 

This year’s unrest in Hong Kong has further boosted the popularity of Tsai, a vocal supporter of the protesters, who have complained of China’s encroachment on the former British colony’s autonomy and called for greater democracy.
Why has Beijing resorted to such a self-defeating strategy? 

China is a vastly richer and more powerful country than in the past, with a military that towers over Taiwan. 

It is also governed by a leader in Xi who has amassed more personal power than any leader since Mao Zedong. 

In this more confident and muscular era, the Communist Party seems determined to set its own path toward unification, taking little account of the views of naysayers.
The logic of Chinese politics in the Xi era makes a softer, more accommodating line from anywhere in the system untenable, unless it comes from the top. 

In turn, Xi himself is determined not to display any weakness on either issue, lest he should give his critics ammunition that can be used against him.
Under Xi’s predecessor Hu Jintao, China displayed some sensitivity to Taiwan’s internal politics and kept a relatively low profile in Hong Kong. 

Under Xi, the opposite is the case. 

Far from finessing China’s position to reassure disillusioned Hong Kongers and influence Taiwanese voters, all the incentives in Beijing are pulling in the direction of being as tough as possible. 

Through four months of unrest, the Hong Kong government has been powerless to respond to protesters’ demands without Beijing’s say-so. 

That paralysis has undermined a core promise from China, that the territory would run its own domestic affairs for half a century after the handover.
The “one country, two systems” formula was devised by Deng Xiaoping and once sounded like an ingenious way to win over Hong Kongers and bring them gradually and willingly under Chinese rule. Now it just looks like another form of colonization. 

It’s no wonder that the model is a turn-off for voters in Taiwan, where boisterous democratic elections and free speech have become an entrenched part of the island’s politics and society.
Amid the Hong Kong protests, the last thing the Communist Party should want is a rebuff from voters in Taiwan. 

Yet Beijing has shown little interest in modifying its stance. 

The inevitable result is that Taiwan has become even more alienated from China, while sympathy for the island’s plight in the outside world has grown.
China has been squeezing Taiwan on other fronts, stepping up a campaign to isolate the island diplomatically and launching an information war. 

It’s been taking a leaf out of the Russian playbook by overtly and covertly influencing the local media and community groups, taking control of some newspapers and television stations, and seeding money to candidates through temple associations.
This uncompromising approach is magnifying the risks of further miscalculations. 

Both sides have much to lose. 

Taiwan plays an outsize role in global technology value chains and is at the center of growing U.S.-China tensions and Xi’s long-term plans for his country’s revival as a great power.
A decisive victory for Tsai in January’s election might chasten Beijing and cause it to return to a more consensual strategy. 

But the example of Hong Kong doesn’t so far give much hope that Xi will change course. 

If China continues to double down, the eventual denouement for Taiwan may be far more dangerous.