Taiwanese Electoral Rebuke – A Landslide Verdict Against Growing Dependence on China.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/taiwanese-electoral-rebuke-1417388066
All politics is local, and Saturday’s midterm elections in Taiwan mostly turned on local issues such as food safety, stagnant wages, education and infrastructure. But one factor behind the landslide victory of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party is rising fear that Taiwan’s de facto independence is threatened by the island’s increasing economic ties to China. As Taiwan moves toward presidential elections in January 2016, expect tensions to rise across the Taiwan Strait.
Saturday’s results give the DPP control of some two-thirds of Taiwan’s 22 cities and counties, including four of its six special municipalities. Taipei’s mayor-elect is a DPP-backed independent, so for the first time in 16 years the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), won’t govern the island’s capital and largest city. Taiwan’s last three presidents previously served as mayor of Taipei.
The KMT was quick to admit defeat. “I have heard [voters’] voices and I will not evade my responsibility to start reform,” said President Ma Ying-jeou, who may resign as KMT chairman at a party meeting Wednesday.
Though the scale of its losses is a surprise, the KMT has recently earned a reputation for bungling. A series of scandals over tainted food, including hundreds of tons contaminated with “gutter oil” made from waste and animal feed, led Mr. Ma’s health minister to resign in October. The economic affairs minister resigned in August after gas explosions killed 32 people in the southern city of Kaohsiung. The education minister quit amid a scandal over research fraud.
This year’s major political event, however, was the Sunflower Movement, which culminated in a 24-day student-led occupation of the legislature to block ratification of a trade deal signed with China. The cross-strait agreement, covering trade in services, would have been the 22nd enacted since 2008, when Mr. Ma initiated economic detente with China. Freer trade and travel have helped Taiwan’s economy, but in ways that could make the island dependent on Beijing. Cross-strait trade has nearly doubled since 2008, with some 40% of Taiwanese exports and 80% of outbound investment now going to China.
Cross-strait issues were especially prominent in Taipei’s mayoral contest, in which DPP-backed political novice and renowned surgeon Ko Wen-je faced the KMT’s Sean Lien, a former banker from one of the ruling party’s most prominent families. Asked at a debate if candidates who share the DPP’s pro-independence leanings are fit to serve as top officials, Dr. Ko retorted with a blast against “cross-strait compradors” who risk selling out Taiwan for ties with China. Last year Mr. Lien and his father, the KMT’s honorary chairman, met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing.
The DPP’s victory, and especially Dr. Ko’s, signal to the KMT and Beijing that they can’t make deals over the heads of Taiwan’s people. KMT losers up and down the ballot will likely remember that the Sunflower Movement exploded after KMT legislators tried ratifying the cross-strait services deal unilaterally, without the line-by-line parliamentary review they had promised.
The danger of the DPP’s ascent is that it could freeze trade liberalization not just with China but with all other countries, with disastrous consequences for Taiwan’s export economy.
The way to avoid overreliance on China is to expand trade with everyone else—chiefly through accession to the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership trade zone now under negotiation among 12 countries representing 40% of global GDP. But getting into TPP will probably require Taiwan to have the tacit consent of Beijing, which is unlikely to come if Taipei opts to reverse the cross-strait commercial cooperation of recent years.
So both parties have challenges ahead: the DPP to recognize the economic and strategic importance of trade liberalization, and the KMT to honor the public’s concerns about China through more honest and transparent policy-making.
China will further roil Taiwan’s politics if it overreacts to the DPP victories. The way to secure the island’s peaceful reunification with the mainland is to respect the will of Taiwan’s people for democratic self-government.
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