The outcome of Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections would not raise the risk of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, former US National Security Council China director Ryan Hass said on Wednesday.
Although Beijing would have preferred a candidate other than Vice President William Lai (賴清德) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to have won, that fact alone “does not raise the risk of war,” Hass said in a commentary published by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
Hass is director of the think tank’s John L. Thornton China Center and is its Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) does not need to gain control of Taiwan in the near term, he just cannot afford to permanently “lose” Taiwan on his watch, Hass said.
Xi needs to continue to be able to call unification with Taiwan a “historical inevitability,” just like every People’s Republic of China leader before him, he said.
That a majority of Taiwanese want the “status quo” to continue also provides a “soothing set of facts” for Xi, he said.
Meanwhile, former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) chairman and managing director Richard Bush said that Taiwan’s political system is more fragmented and complicated than it has been since 2008.
The Taiwan People’s Party winning eight seats in the legislature would give it significant bargaining power with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the DPP, Bush said.
However, Taiwan’s politicians have experience working out legislative compromises and no party would get everything it wants, “but society gets the policies it needs,” he said.
“Those bargaining skills will now be at a premium,” he said.
Patricia Kim, a research fellow at the Brookings Center for East Asia Policy Studies, said that Lai affirmed his responsibility to protect cross-strait peace and stability, while indicating an openness to dialogue with China “under the principles of dignity and parity.”
“The ball is now in Beijing’s court,” Kim said, adding that China has to show the world that while it will not give up its claims and goals, it too can act “judiciously and pragmatically” in its pursuit of peace and stability.
Adam Liff, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, said that the successor to Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) would have their work cut out.
US policymakers have to pay close attention to Taiwan’s legislative bargaining, including on defense-related spending and other matters of particular concern to Washington, as well as the expansion of Taiwan’s international support and Beijing’s pressure on the nation’s diplomatic allies, Liff said.
Former US acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Susan Thornton said that Taiwanese are “not so divided.”
“They all want to live in basic security and tranquility, they want to enjoy their hard-earned freedoms and they want their government to improve their livelihoods, especially for the next generations, and to be accountable,” Thornton said.
“Taiwanese people want their government to find a way to get along with their ‘mainland neighbors’ to the extent that they can keep the status quo of separate rule with economic and cultural exchanges,” she said.
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