Post-election challenges face China

The opposition Kuomintang’s (KMT) Ma Ying-jeou, the son of a refugee from the mainland, won a landslide victory in Saturday’s election on a promise to improve relations with China.

“The election outcome certainly is the best-case scenario for Beijing,” said Drew Thompson, director of China Studies at the Nixon Center in Washington.

“The challenge for Beijing going forward will be to find a suitable approach to the new leadership in Taiwan,” he said.

China and Taiwan have been governed separately since the end of a civil war in 1949, but Beijing still claims the island as part of its territory, threatening to use force to bring about reunification if need be.

However, reunification has seemed an ever more distant dream during the past eight years when Taiwan has been led by the independence-minded Chen Shui-bian, the island’s first non-KMT president.

With the KMT back in the driving seat, Beijing may be hoping for a new beginning, but forward momentum does not come easy in the delicate and intensely emotional diplomatic play across the Taiwan Strait.

In the post-election situation, China’s key priority should be to create an atmosphere where the current peaceful status quo can be solidified, without antagonizing Taiwanese concerned about losing independence, analysts argued.

“Beijing will have to be prepared to compromise and soften its tone and make palatable proposals, while recognizing the political realities that Taiwan politicians must operate in,” said Thompson.

China is likely to welcome the fact that not only did its preferred candidate win, but two controversial referendums about seeking United Nations membership for Taiwan also failed, with only about 35 percent of voters casting their ballot, far below the required 50 percent.

The referendums, held alongside the presidential election, were seen as potentially explosive, especially because one of them suggested applying under the name of Taiwan, signalling a separate identity from China.

Although China could hardly have asked for more from Taiwan’s voters, the tone on the mainland remained cautious on Sunday, and no official reaction was immediately available.

Even China’s comparatively free-wheeling academic community appeared reluctant to stick its neck out.

“Ma Ying-jeou has emphasized all along that he will proceed from the basic interests of the people and relax tension,” said Wu Nengyuan, a Taiwan expert at the Academy of Social Sciences in Fujian, the province opposite Taiwan.

“No doubt, we’ll see even better development of trade, travel and transportation. That’s what the Taiwan people want, and that’s what the mainland wishes to see, too,” he said.

The absence of a too fast and clear-cut reaction from China could reflect a pragmatic wait-and-see attitude, according to analysts.

However, some foreign observers warned China remained too constrained by its previous tough stance on Taiwan and domestic hardline constituencies to be able to produce any meaningful change.

“The problem is you have very powerful forces in politics that are very nationalistic. You have the military, you have the security forces,” said Bruce Jacobs, a China scholar at Australia’s Monash University.

“It’s in the military’s interest to keep tensions in the Taiwan Straits high, because if there’s tension, they are likely to get higher budgets and more military toys to play with.”

The result for ties between China and Taiwan, Jacobs said, was “more of the same.”

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