Breaking News, World News and Taiwan News.

Updated Friday, January 20, 2012 0:41 am TWN, The China Post news staff

Sponsors
▪	Get the best deals for Guangzhou Hotels or choose from more than 10,000 hotels in 499 Chinese cities.
▪	Find great real time deals on China Flights. Book flights to China or China domestic flights 24/7.
▪	Buy china wholesale products from reliable chinese wholesalers on DHgate.com!
▪	Save 75% for all hotels in Shanghai, Beijing and whole China. Lowest rates for Flights in China.

A DPP U-turn is not needed but the road ahead is uphill

Recently popular comments in mainland China's weibo-sphere read in English: “English! Add Oil!” For people who are familiar with Chinese-English, the term “add oil” refers to the notoriously difficult-to-translate Chinese encouragement term “Jia you” (加油) meaning roughly “to cheer up,” “to carry on the good work.” President Ma Ying-jeou's campaign, for example, was named “Tai Wan Jia You Zan” (台灣加油讚, Go Taiwan, Bravo!).

The “English” in the comments, however, refers not to the language but to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen, who Ma defeated on Saturday. Her name “Ing-wen” (英文) is identical to the Chinese translation of “the English language.” It is a tactic by the Chinese netizens to express their admiration to the DPP leader while circumventing the mainland's online censorship. According to The New York Times, some 250 million Chinese weibo (microblog) users followed and commented on Saturday's election. “It's all anyone on Weibo was talking about this weekend,” Zhang Ming, a political science professor at Renmin University in Beijing, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

A DPP leader receiving wide praise from mainland Chinese (albeit mostly online as other major Chinese media still downplayed Taiwan's election) was almost unimaginable four years ago. The divisive and overtly domestic-focused tone of the DPP's previous leaders, most notably former President Chen Shui-bian, often helped present the party as a source of political (and sometimes actual) disturbance. Tsai's ability to rebrand the DPP and promote it (perhaps inadvertently) to the world audience is one of the least commended strengths of the DPP chairwoman slated to resign by March.

Tsai's focus on social issues instead of divisive ethnic ones, her appeal to rational sentiments rather than typical DPP play of the “tragic heroic” card, and her general unwillingness to highlight herself in the campaign had made DPP more appealing not only to independent voters but also to the international community. It is perhaps ironic that Tsai herself becomes the evidence to disprove the DPP's contention that Taiwan's democracy have little impact on mainland China. However, it also present the opposition party a window of opportunity for its ongoing journey to reinvent itself.

This election has shown the DPP that anti-mainland tactics will no longer work. The majority of Taiwanese people do not want to be absorbed into the PRC but they also do not want the return of isolation under an overtly independent stance. Tsai's deliberately vague “Taiwan Consensus” fails to convince voters of the DPP's grasp of the cross-strait situation and she paid dearly for that. As cross-strait ties continue to warm and as the terrible consequences predicted by the DPP (Chinese people taking over Taiwanese jobs, Ma surrendering to China, Taiwanese people losing their freedom) fail to materialize, the DPP will find China bashing less and less politically effective.

1|2|Next Page>>