---

https://reurl.cc/mdK4jG

In a blow to China, Taiwan’s president coasts to a second term

HER VICTORY was expected but not, perhaps, its margin. Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’
s president, won a second four-year term in a landslide on January 11th. She
drew over 8m votes, more than any candidate has received in any of the seven
direct elections held since 1996.




Ms Tsai, Taiwan’s first female president, scooped 57% of the votes cast,
against 39% for her main opponent, Han Kuo-yu of the pro-China Kuomintang
(KMT). A third candidate, James Soong, also seen as pro-China, took around
4%. In simultaneous elections for the island’s parliament, the Legislative
Yuan, always likely to be much tighter, her Democratic Progressive Party
(DPP) won with a reduced majority. It will have 61 of the body’s 113 seats,
down from 68.

蔡英文做為台灣第一位女性總統，以57%的得票率勝過了她的主要對手，親中的KMT
候選人韓導的39%。第三位候選人，同樣也是親中政黨提名的宋神掌，則是得到了4%。
與此同時進行的立法院選舉選情更為緊張，她所屬的DPP拿下了113席中的61席成為
多數黨，但是席次比上一次的68席更少。


Ms Tsai’s triumph will infuriate China, which claims Taiwan as its own
territory. Ever since she took office in 2016, it has been doing what it can
to put pressure on voters to reject the DPP, which has traditionally favoured
independence from China. To this end, China has staged military exercises,
including bomber-jet flights near Taiwan, and waged a diplomatic campaign to
isolate it internationally. Since 2016 it has poached seven of the developing
countries that give diplomatic recognition to Taiwan, reducing their total
number to 15.

蔡女士的勝選將會激怒中國，因為中國一再宣稱台灣是中國的領土。從她2016年首次



The campaign seemed at first to be working. Just over a year ago, Ms Tsai’s
popularity was dwindling. The DPP took a thrashing in municipal elections in
November 2018 and she was forced to step down as the party’s chairwoman. Two
factors help explain the turnaround in her political fortunes since then.

不過一年以前，蔡英文的支持度暴跌。DPP在2018年11月的地方首長大選中遭到重擊，蔡
也被迫辭去黨主席的位置，有兩大因素可以解釋他怎麼扭轉她的政治命運。


Perhaps most important was what has happened in Hong Kong. In January last
year China’s president, Xi Jinping, made a speech reiterating its
long-standing carrot-and-stick approach to Taiwan’s future: the promise of a
version of the “one country, two systems” formula it uses to rule Hong
Kong; and the threat of military invasion should the island take steps
towards formal independence.




The outbreak in June of months of sometimes violent unrest in Hong Kong’s
reignited fears in Taiwan about its possible future if it did not elect a
leader trusted to protect its sovereignty. Ms Tsai successfully capitalised
on this, and her approval ratings soared. Her opponent, Mr Han, campaigned on
a platform of enriching the island’s economy through closer ties with China.
This enabled her to portray him as untrustworthy and unable to protect the
island’s de facto independence, frequently pointing to a visit Mr Han made
to Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong in March. The DPP also criticised
Mr Han for describing Taiwan, in general terms, as part of China.



“The results of this election...have shown that when our sovereignty and
democracy are threatened, the Taiwanese people will shout our determination
even more loudly back,” Ms Tsai told a victory press conference on January
11th.

蔡英文在1月11勝選的記者會上說: 選舉的結果證明了當我們的主權與民主受到威脅
的時候，台灣人會更大聲地展現他們的決心。


The second factor was a transformation in the economic outlook. Since 2000
Taiwan’s voters have been asked to choose between closer economic ties with
China, advocated by the KMT, at the risk of losing the island’s hard-won
autonomy, or a more independence-leaning stance pushed by the DPP, carrying
the risk of economic marginalisation.




The trade war waged between China and America has changed everything. To
dodge American import tariffs, many Taiwan-owned businesses based in China
have diversified by investing more in South-East Asia—and in Taiwan itself,
where government statistics show that, encouraged by incentives, they have
pledged investment of close to $24bn over the next few years. The growth rate
forecast for this year, 2.72%, should outstrip that of the other former “
Asian Tigers”. For the first time, notes Lai I-chung of the Prospect
Foundation, a security-focused Taiwanese think-tank, Ms Tsai’s security and
economic policies were aligned. This helped the DPP win support from
businesses, normally a KMT bastion.


的國安與經濟政策緊密結合，這幫DPP爭取到更多以往被視為KMT鐵票的生意人的支持。


Nathan Batto of Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s leading research institute, notes
that Ms Tsai also won support by proving that she could deepen ties with
America, the ultimate guarantor of Taiwan’s security. In 2019, for the first
time since 1979, when America switched recognition from Taiwan to China,
America and Taiwan’s national security advisers met face-to-face, and
America sold Taiwan 66 F-16 fighter jets.




As Ms Tsai had a good year internationally, Mr Batto points out that Mr Han
had a bad one at home. He shot to political stardom in 2018, when, after 16
years out of national politics, his folksy manner helped him pull off an
electoral upset to become mayor of the southern port city of Kaohsiung. But
last year he annoyed locals by taking a leave of absence after just six
months in office to campaign for the presidency. Formal proceedings to recall
him are already under way. In addition, the KMT’s chairman, Wu Den-yih,
provoked an angry backlash when he put Wu Sz-huai, an unpopular retired
general who supports unification with China, on a list of nominees for
legislative seats that are allocated by proportional representation, making
him a shoo-in.




Based on polling, Mr Batto estimates that in 2019, almost 40% of Taiwanese
people thought that at least part of their identity was Chinese. Mr Wu and
other KMT bosses are expected to offer their resignations this week to atone
for the party’s losses. But Mr Batto thinks the KMT, founded in China in
1919, is unlikely to disappear. And Taiwanese doing business in mainland
China will always need a party like the KMT to represent them, Mr Batto
argues.



It is not clear how Mr Xi will respond to Ms Tsai’s resounding win. Neither
Mr Lai nor Chao Chien-min, a former senior China-policy official in a KMT
administration, think it will resort to military action or other dramatic
moves. Instead, they say, there will probably be more of the same:
diplomatic-isolation campaigns and military exercises in the neighbourhood.
Ms Tsai can be expected to be at pains not to provoke China. But for many in
Beijing, her victory is provocation enough.



--
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc), 來自: 61.231.86.122 (臺灣)
※ 文章代碼(AID): #1U6nNeCB (HatePolitics)
※ 文章網址: https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/HatePolitics/M.1578833384.A.30B.html