Taiwan’s election next weekend poses challenges for Washington no matter who wins, with a victory for the ruling party sure to exacerbate tensions with China, while an opposition triumph might raise awkward questions about the nation’s defense policies.
The presidential and legislative elections on Saturday next week represent the first real wild card this year for Washington’s goal of stabilizing ties with China.
Beijing has cast the elections as a choice between war and peace across the Taiwan Strait, warning that any attempt to push for Taiwan’s independence means conflict.
Photo: CNA
US officials have been careful to avoid appearing to steer or to interfere with the nation’s democratic process.
“Our strong expectation and hope is that those elections be free of intimidation or coercion, or interference from all sides. The United States is not involved and will not be involved in these elections,” US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said last month.
Such detachment has proven tricky in the past. Former US president Barack Obama’s administration raised eyebrows before Taiwan’s 2012 election when a senior US official aired doubts about whether the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) then-presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) could maintain a stable relationship with China.
Tsai lost that year, but won the presidency in 2016 and re-election in 2020. Tensions with China have risen, raising fears that Beijing might act on its vow to use military force against Taiwan.
Term limits bar Tsai from running again, but China has branded this year’s DPP candidate and Vice President William Lai (賴清德) as a “separatist,” and analysts expect Beijing to ramp up military pressure should he prevail.
Both the DPP and the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) say only they can preserve the peace and have committed to bolstering Taiwan’s defenses.
Both say only Taiwan’s 23 million people can decide the nation’s future, although the KMT says it strongly opposes independence.
Washington also says it does not support independence, but there is some concern in the US capital that a victory by the KMT’s presidential candidate, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) could undermine US efforts to beef up Taiwan’s military deterrence.
“Administration officials’ lips say they are neutral, but their body language, reflected in overall policy statements about China, say they support the DPP they know rather than the KMT they are unsure about,” former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) director Douglas Paal said.
There is ambivalence in Taiwan about heavier investment in defense, and that the KMT sees better ways to maintain peace other than military spending, which would mean higher taxes with no prospect of matching China’s capabilities, Paal said.
“With wars in Gaza and Ukraine, US capacity stretched, and its future direction debated at home, the status quo has to look preferable to many in Washington,” he said.
AIT Chair Laura Rosenberger met both Lai and Hou on their visits to the US last year.
“US policy on Taiwan will remain the same regardless of which party is in power. We look forward to working with whomever Taiwan voters elect,” a US Department of State spokesperson said.
Some US officials are bracing for China to increase military, economic and diplomatic pressure on Taiwan regardless of who is elected.
“This will likely be a period of heightened tensions that requires diplomacy, clear channels of communication and reiteration of the importance of peace, stability and the status quo,” a senior US administration official told Reuters.
“We’ve been pretty clear in the meetings [with China], expressing our concern about military, economic and other coercion across the board,” the official said.
US officials had “developed deep relations” with each candidate and had stressed the “importance of continuity in key policy areas,” including on defense and maintaining the cross-strait “status quo,” a person familiar with US policy said.
Over the years, Washington has stressed that it cannot take the issue of Taiwan’s defense more seriously than Taiwan itself, and has pushed Taipei to make itself a “porcupine” against potential Chinese military action by investing in cost-effective, mobile and harder-to-destroy military assets.
US congressional support for Taiwan is strong, but one thing that could erode this would be any move by Taiwan to pause or reverse commitments to improve its self-defense capabilities, analysts said.
Any defense policy paralysis in Taiwan resulting from the elections yielding a split between different parties controlling Taiwan’s presidency and majority control of the legislature would likely cause consternation in Washington, they said.
While some question whether the KMT would be as committed to defense reforms and spending as the DPP, a KMT win could vent some steam out of cross-strait dynamics, which Beijing says is the most dangerous issue in US-China relations.
Kharis Templeman of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution said questions about the KMT’s commitment to defense cooperation were valid, but there were genuine differences of opinion in Washington about which candidate would be best for US interests.
“A Hou presidency could help stabilize cross-strait relations, lower the near-term threat level and buy more time for Taiwan’s defense reforms to be implemented,” Templeman said.
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