A major upheaval is brewing in the Far East as Taiwan votes this weekend to elect a new President. The winner according to pollsters will be Ms Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) — the island’s first female President.
The likely upheaval will get more fuel if her party also wins the majority in national parliament for the first time in decades.
The elections are a big deal because her take over from President Ma Ying-jeou of the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT), could trigger significant changes in relationships with China and spawn challenges for Washington’s approaches to Beijing.
Taiwan, also called the Republic of China (mainland China is called the Peoples Republic of China), has been a vital American military ally ever since Mao Zedong’s Communist Party grabbed the mainland in 1949. The remnants of the nationalist army that allied with the US against Mao were forced to flee to Taiwan.
Until 1971 when Richard Nixon rebuilt ties with Mao, the US recognized only Taiwan (Republic of China) as representing all Chinese people at the United Nations.
The US rapprochement with Beijing was obtained at the cost of disavowing Taiwan and accepting that mainland China is the only China recognized by the UN.
Following that, Taiwan lost international legitimacy as a political entity although it has over 23 million people, a democratic government, an army and all the attributes of a modern state.
Its diplomats and citizens cannot use their Taiwan ROC passports to enter the United Nations, as do people from other countries, and it cooperates with various UN agencies using the name Chinese Taipeh. Of course, this riles Taiwanese officials but no country dares to upset China by siding with them.
It also means Taiwan cannot join free-trade groupings although it can conclude agreements giving it many of the benefits as Chinese Taipeh.
This somewhat ridiculous situation of a fully formed nation without political recognition as an independent state may start unfreezing if Tsai wins both the presidency and parliament because she will have a strong popular mandate.
However, nothing about this situation is easy to unravel. Tsai’s DPP has long chafed under Taiwan’s political “non-existence”, whereas KMT old timers still have pretensions of being the genuine representatives of “all” China.
But both DPP and KMT have been pragmatic. During Ma’s eight-year tenure, thriving business and tourism from China flourished bringing the mainland much closer in cultural and economic ties to its “renegade province”. Both sides signed 23 agreements and 1948 flights operate weekly between Taiwan and 61 mainland Chinese cities.
Ma’s historic meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last November in Singapore was a public statement of improved relations but the substance was shallow.
A 1992 Consensus said that there is only “one China,” even if Taipei and Beijing strongly disagree over which of them embodies it.
Unlike the KMT, the DPP has never fully accepted this Consensus but it will have to walk on eggs if Tsai wins because Beijing has hundreds of missiles, and tens of boats and some submarines turned in Taiwan’s direction.
It stubbornly refuses to rule out invasion to unify China and deter any declaration of independence by Taiwan.
Washington is committed to defending its oldest military ally in the Far East and President Barack Obama has repeated this commitment several times during his eastwards pivot.
He recently agreed to supply about $1.8 billion of new generation weapons to Taiwan, despite angry reactions from Beijing.
No one expects a war partly because Beijing does not want to drag Washington into the conflict. So all sides dance around the core issue arguing that there can be many views of China and none need be an obstacle to closer business and cultural relations and tourism.
Much will depend on how Tsai plays her hand. So far, she has been prudent and says she is much more interested in creating jobs and prosperity for Taiwan’s people, especially the young, than sorting out the one China issue.
Yet, those young people could force her hand. They are the new generation that wants a national identity and a national passport to hold proudly wherever they travel.
Many also want an energetic country that maintains its technological leadership, especially in electronics and IT. It may be hard to make them acquiesce to Beijing’s political discourse about how they are renegades from Communist China.
It may be even harder to get them to put their talents at the service of mainland China rather than their home country of Taiwan. They may not be willing to belong to a province of China whatever the autonomy Beijing offers.
This identity issue is worrisome and potentially explosive if Beijing’s political diehards refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the feelings of a Taiwanese generation that is less interested in 1949 than the future.
Beijing pretends that Taiwan is a territory like Hong Kong, which rejoined the mainland after the end of a 99-year lease given to Britain. It says some new formula can be found to give the Taiwanese a sense of separate identity while belonging to a political entity controlled from Beijing.
But Taiwan was never a territory occupied by a colonial power under leasehold. It is a modern nation where many believe its form of democracy deserves to be the model for the mainland.