Taiwan will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on January 13. They are of great importance to the stability of relations between China and the United States amid the current strategic competition between the two great powers. Whoever becomes the next president of Taiwan will have a major impact on China’s geopolitical ambitions in the region and on the mediation of Sino-US relations.

Who are the candidates for president of Taiwan? The presidential campaign is a three-way race defined primarily by the candidate’s position on cross-strait relations, that is, what Taiwan’s position should be between China and the United States. On the one hand, the nationalist Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), in power for 8 years; on the other, the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), more friendly towards Beijing; and, third, a new populist party, the People’s Party of Taiwan (PPT), more focused on channeling internal grievances and more strategically ambiguous about China policy.

Elections in Taiwan that will mark the fate of the world

Electoral trends suggest a divided electorate. Currently, the ruling party, the DPP, appears to be the favorite to win the presidency by a narrow margin; The KMT remains at a safe distance and may still have a chance, especially if it plays its cards well in the final days, while the TPP has the potential to become the deciding vote in the next legislature.

Whoever wins, post-election Taiwan will most likely have a new president with an electorally weaker mandate and will be limited by an opposition-held legislature. It will be a very different situation from the last election in 2020, when the DPP was re-elected with 57% of the presidential vote and a solid legislative majority.

From an electoral point of view, Chinese politics is usually the most important factor in deciding presidential elections, and in this regard the two main political parties have very different visions. A KMT victory would strategically mean more peaceful relations between Taiwan and China, but could sow suspicion between Taipei and Washington.

The fate of Taiwan is our future

Taiwan’s relations with Beijing and Washington are often a zero-sum game. Ties between the United States and Taiwan have seen significant progress in recent years, including in areas of security cooperation. If the KMT government decides to warm up relations with Beijing, it will have to handle it with great wisdom and delicacy to avoid a cooling of US-Taiwanese ties.

Economically, the KMT promises to speed up ties with China, even as many of Taiwan’s trading partners are diversifying or “diversifying” from the Chinese economy. KMT candidate Hou Yu-ih also promised to revive the 2013 Cross-Straits Trade and Services Agreement (CSSTA), a trade agreement that was meant to bring the two economies closer together, but was met with waves of protests by Taiwanese society and ultimately failed to be ratified by the legislature .

In terms of people-to-people interaction, the KMT is also committed to exploring the possibility of opening Taiwan’s labor market to workers from the People’s Republic, in the name of economic liberalization and generating goodwill on both sides of the strait.

On the contrary, if the DPP wins, it will most likely receive even more pressure from China. Beijing has repeatedly criticized the DPP’s candidate, current Vice President Lai Ching-te, leaving the DPP with little way to save face. Among other things, when Lai visited the United States in August 2023, he called it “blatant exploitation of US-Taiwan ties to achieve independence.” de jure“.

Additional economic sanctions against Taiwan are also likely to be imposed if the DPP wins. Song Tao, director of the Taiwan Affairs Office, described Taiwan’s election as a choice not only between “peace or war” but also between “prosperity or recession.” As part of that economic offensive, China has already suspended some preferential tariffs on some Taiwanese exports to the People’s Republic of China, possibly as a way to discourage Taiwanese voters from voting for the DPP.

Preemptive punishment of the DPP has also manifested itself in increased Chinese military activity in the waters and air around Taiwan. If the DPP wins, there is every reason to expect that these provocative Chinese military operations will Gray zone continue and even intensify.

The risks of military escalation are increasing daily, especially as China appears determined to continue escalating its military maneuvers near Taiwan, forcing the United States and other countries to launch their own overflight operations nearby, making accidents more likely. And not just an accidental escalation: since Beijing is boycotting official communication channels with the DPP government, the lack of contact makes escalation all the more likely.

Persuading Beijing to ease its campaign of coercion and help stabilize peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait will depend on Taiwan’s political parties, whether DPP or KMT, achieving landslide victories in the upcoming elections. A landslide victory for the DPP would allow Taiwan to negotiate with Beijing from a position of strength. It would also break Taiwan’s infamous “eight-year curse,” becoming the first party to win three consecutive terms in Taiwan’s democratic era.

This may finally convince Beijing that the DPP is here to stay and that Chinese attempts to undermine it are futile. In turn, this could give Beijing more incentive to show greater flexibility and goodwill towards the DPP, in the hope of breaking the deadlock. However, if the DPP narrowly wins the presidency and fails to retain a majority in the Legislative Assembly, Beijing will have little incentive to show goodwill towards the DPP, and tensions will remain high.

On the other hand, a resounding victory for the KMT would give it a stronger domestic mandate to pursue a program of economic engagement with its neighbor. This means that the KMT would be able to negotiate better terms with Beijing and that any agreement it signs with Beijing would have a better chance of being accepted and ratified by the Taiwanese people and the legislature.

In short, Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections are of great importance to the overall stability of US-China relations and the cohesion of the Indo-Pacific regional alliance. The solution to regional instability is two-fold: Taiwanese voters must give their next government a convincing victory to strengthen their position at the negotiating table, and Beijing must bet on moderation and pragmatism to achieve its Taiwan goals through peaceful, not military, means. (OR)

Wen-Ti Sung is a research associate at the China Global Center of the Atlantic Council and an associate at the Sinic Analysis project in www.cadal.org