Until yesterday, Taiwan’s presidential election had seemed to be a close run thing. The attempted assassination of the incumbent President Chen Shui-bian and his deputy Annette Lu on the eve of the vote yesterday is likely to swing the election their way.
Political murder has not been part of Taiwanese politics. The 20 percent of the electorate whom polls showed were undecided will demonstrate their disgust by swinging behind Chen. This will have important repercussions for Taiwan’s relationship with mainland China, which has been angered by the long-term policy of the president’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to declare Taiwan independent of mainland China.
Beijing would have preferred a win by the opposition alliance, which contains the Kuomintang (KMT) party of former mainland leader Chiang Kai-Shek. From the day Chiang was driven from the mainland by the communists in 1949 until elections in March 2000, the KMT ruled Taiwan and turned it into one of the world’s richest territories. But the KMT always maintained that the island of Taiwan, formerly Formosa, was part of China and that it was the legitimate mainland government. The KMT’s fiction suited the mainland government.
Chen’s DPP won the presidency four years ago because 50 years in power had steeped the KMT in corruption. The voters ratified this verdict in the December 2001 general election. Though most Taiwanese were and remain happy with their country’s ambiguous political status quo, there is a feeling that maybe the threat of independence might galvanize Beijing into positive talks. However the DPP’s cautious long-term aim has merely deepened the tension between Taiwan and the mainland. In 2001 Chen lifted the ban on direct investment in the mainland. Taiwanese investors are already playing a valuable role in the mainland’s economic upsurge. They are also looking for further international challenges — for instance, they are poised to increase their investment in Saudi Arabia.
If Chen wins today, Beijing will need to take stock of its aggressive Taiwan policy. Threatening the troublesome Taiwanese is not the answer. Mainland China is in the midst of a phenomenal economic boom as the country’s commercial genius is unleashed after some 60 years of stultifying command economics. Such growth can only be maintained and broadened in a climate of political stability. A military confrontation with Taiwan would set this dramatic economic progress on its head.
But if China finds a way to work with Taiwan, it can only benefit the people on both sides. Who knows, one day the two could even come together peaceably.
