“Looming anxiety” about the future of cross-strait relations is having a huge impact on Taiwan’s presidential election campaign, US academic Shelley Rigger told a Washington conference on Wednesday.
“It’s not so much a debate about the details of policy; it’s more a debate about who can handle this,” she said. “President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) policies do better than the candidate himself. It’s not that people don’t like what he is doing, it’s that people are not entirely confident in his leadership.”
The conference entitled “Taiwan’s Upcoming Presidential and Legislative Elections,” organized by the Brookings Institution, was the latest in a series of US events reflecting a growing interest in Taiwanese politics driven by unease over the bigger picture of US-China relations.
Moderator Richard Bush, a senior fellow at Brookings, asked Rigger how the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could have come back so strongly after being “consigned to the graveyard” just three and a half years ago.
“One thing that has helped the DPP a lot is disillusionment with Ma,” Rigger said. “The expectations that Taiwanese voters had for President Ma were incredibly high. People were excited and thought that he was going to do great things. It’s not so much that he hasn’t delivered on his promises; it’s that as a leader the expectation was that he would be more charismatic and more inspiring.”
Instead, she said, he had been inward looking and aloof.
At the same time, Rigger said, the DPP had benefited from the perception that in a democracy there is a need for a multi-party environment.
However, while the DPP has revived remarkably well, its success is problematic, she said.
“I don’t think the DPP has really dealt with the problems that caused its downfall in 2008. The recovery has been too quick and the same people are back again, and that makes Beijing very uncomfortable,” she said.
Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉), an assistant research fellow at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica in Taipei, said he had heard that there was some deep dissatisfaction with Ma in Beijing.
He said Ma had not been doing what hardliners in Beijing expected politically and that Ma had not given as much as he received.
Hsu said that if Ma is re-elected, the pressure on him from Beijing might increase.
Rigger said she was in Shanghai last weekend meeting academics and officials, and their message was crystal clear: “They do not want to see Tsai elected.”
“The focus of their anxiety is her unwillingness to endorse the [so-called] ‘1992 consensus.’ That is going to be a real sticking point if she wins,” Rigger said. “They are going to put pressure on the US to keep this situation under control if she wins and they were very explicit in threatening various kinds of repercussions for Taiwan.”
Among the likely repercussions are that direct quasi-official talks on cross-strait affairs could end; “economic assistance” — ostensibly from China to Taiwan — would be hard to continue; agreements already signed might not be implemented, including the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA); and the international space that Taiwan has been given could be pulled back.
“What the US government genuinely desires is another free and fair election,” Rigger said.
However, it is also true that the last three years of “peace” in the Taiwan Strait had provided the US with the opportunity to focus its attention on other pressing issues.
If Tsai is elected, Rigger added, there is a possibility that the People’s Republic of China would no longer continue that pattern and that “would be unfortunate from the US point of view.”
Bush said that if Tsai won the election, the US would not prejudge her and that any anxieties that might exist could be calmed, based on her performance.
“We would want to see what she did, rather than making a judgement in advance,” he said.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck off Tainan at 11:47am today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 32.3km northeast of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 7.3km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Tainan and Chiayi County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and County, and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Kaohsiung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Taitung County and offshore Penghu County, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
RESPONSE: The government would investigate incidents of Taiwanese entertainers in China promoting CCP propaganda online in contravention of the law, the source said Taiwanese entertainers living in China who are found to have contravened cross-strait regulations or collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could be subject to fines, a source said on Sunday. Several Taiwanese entertainers have posted on the social media platform Sina Weibo saying that Taiwan “must be returned” to China, and sharing news articles from Chinese state media. In response, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has asked the Ministry of Culture to investigate whether the entertainers had contravened any laws, and asked for them to be questioned upon their return to Taiwan, an official familiar with the matter said. To curb repeated