Taiwan’s New Direction However Beijing reacts to its new leaders, Taipei needs to build links with others.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwans-new-direction-1453053560
Tsai Ing-wen easily won Taiwan’s presidential election on Saturday, as expected, and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took its first-ever majority in the legislature. The party platform stressed Taiwan’s right to democratic self-government, and the victory margins received a last-minute boost from an unexpected source: the political bullying of a teen pop star.
Hours before voting began, Taiwanese social media exploded with anger over a video in which Chou Tzu-yu, a 16-year-old Taiwanese member of a South Korean “K-pop” group, was forced by her management to apologize for waving Taiwan’s flag on a TV show. “There is only one China and the two sides of the Strait are one,” she read from a script, promising to “seriously reflect” on her behavior. The glum scene resembled a hostage video.
It would have been hard to concoct a display more likely to reinforce Taiwanese fears that China’s economic and military power threatens their democratic way of life. Candidates across the political spectrum defended Ms. Chou, but the episode was bad news for the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT), which since 2008 has prioritized closer ties with China. Several tight legislative races may have tipped for the DPP as a result.
ENLARGE Ms. Tsai alluded to the starlet at her victory rally outside DPP headquarters Saturday night, pledging a strong presidency “so that none of our citizens need to apologize because of our identity.” She added: “Our democratic system, national identity and international space must be respected. Any forms of suppression will harm the stability of cross-Strait relations.”
That’s a message to Beijing, which has to decide how to react to the Taiwanese vote. If Chinese leader Xi Jinping tries to use coercion to bring Taiwan around, tensions will spike. But if he recognizes that coercion risks alienating Taiwanese further, then cross-Strait economic ties, at least, could deepen.
Ms. Tsai is promising to maintain the cross-Strait status quo and not push toward formal independence. Her first priority is a bill to tighten legislative oversight of negotiations with China, a response to KMT attempts to pass cross-Strait deals with minimal review. She’ll then seek to resume negotiations with Beijing on trade in commodities, then perhaps to revive the agreement on trade in services that has been stalled since protests in 2014 called for greater public oversight. But these plans require a willing partner in Beijing.
Another strategic imperative is to expand Taiwanese ties with everyone else. Her aides tout a “southbound” policy to boost trade with the likes of Vietnam, Indonesia and India, where Taiwanese hardware giant Foxconn announced a $5 billion investment last year. Opening free-trade talks with Japan would be a step forward, as would a bilateral investment treaty with the European Union.
Most important is winning a spot in the second round of the pending 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord, which Ms. Tsai says is among her goals. That would likely require ending Taiwan’s exclusion of U.S. pork imports, among other liberalizations. These will be politically sensitive within Ms. Tsai’s party, so she’ll need more skill than some of her predecessors had in dealing with the legislature.
On Saturday Ms. Tsai singled out the U.S. and Japan among Taiwan’s “international friends.” Let’s hope that friendship is reciprocated. The growth of economic, political and military cooperation among Taipei, Washington and Tokyo will be central to maintaining stability in East Asia.
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