Bottom Line
- The Democratic Progressive Party victory in the recent Taiwanese presidential elections has been met with anger from the Chinese Communist Party, while the Kuomintang success in the Legislative Yuan has been met with optimism by Beijing. How China feels about the success of the rising Taiwan’s People’s Party success in the Legislative Yuan is more of a mystery.
- The outcome of the Legislative Yuan election will make passing legislation very challenging for this new Democratic Progressive Party president due to not securing a majority against the Kuomintang and to the influence the Taiwan’s People’s Party has gained in this election cycle.
- This new government will shape the future of Taiwanese politics, and Taiwan appears to be coming closer to a potential conflict with China.
Lifting the Eight-Year Curse and the Opinion of the Taiwanese
Since the first democratic elections were held in 1996, no political party has ever won the Taiwanese presidential election more than two consecutive times until now, with the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP’s) new President Lai Ching-te successfully breaking the
eight-year curse of Taiwanese politics with 40 percent of the vote. This outcome shows how many in Taiwan feel about China and the DPP’s idea of an independent national identity, with the Pew Research Center reporting that around
67 percent of the population identify as only Taiwanese, 28 percent believe they are Chinese and Taiwanese, and 3 percent believing they are entirely Chinese. While studying abroad in Taiwan, I learned different perspectives on why Lai won the presidential election and why the DPP lost in the Legislative Yuan. The most common response I recorded when asking why Lai won the presidential election was: “When I was looking at all of the candidates that were running, I chose Lai not only for his stance on China but also that he is much more capable of running the country than his opponents.” This response aligns with polling conducted by the
Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation in June 2023, in which Lai Ching-te received an approval rating of 56 percent, the highest among all 2024 presidential candidates. However, the most common response that I recorded when asking why the DPP lost in the Legislative Yuan was: “It's good that the DPP cares a lot about our cross-strait relationship with China, but they do not care enough about our daily struggles regarding housing prices, unemployment, and stagnant wages.” This aligns with
Taiwan’s election and democratization study polling that asked which issues should be the most important to the next president: 34.2 percent of respondents said economic development should be the top priority over cross-strait relations, which only received 18.1 percent. In this article, I will be taking a closer look at how China tried to interfere in Taiwan’s elections, the opinions of the Taiwanese people, the current political state of Taiwan, and what Taiwan’s future with China will likely be.
China’s Election Interference
China’s interests are in direct opposition to what Lai and the DPP stand for, which is why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attempts to convince Taiwanese voters to stand with the Kuomintang (KMT) instead of the DPP through
political, economic, and social pressures. China's reasoning is straightforward regarding which side they chose, since the DPP favors independence from China, while the KMT favors bringing Taiwan closer to China. Also, the independent sentence that says China has made it clear that it supports the KMT over the DPP, with the CCP attempting to convince Taiwanese voters to stand with the KMT through political, economic, and social pressures was not meant to be included in the final draft because it has been rephrased as the first sentence of the second paragraph.
China has made it clear that it supports the KMT over the DPP, with the CCP attempting to convince Taiwanese voters to stand with the KMT through
political, economic, and social pressures.
An example of political pressure was when the Beijing Taiwan Affairs Office called Lai a “stubborn advocate of Taiwan independence,
a disruptor of cross-strait peace, and an instigator of potential conflicts in the Taiwan Strait.” An example of economic pressure occurred hours after Lai was announced as the DPP presidential candidate, with China’s Ministry of Commerce announcing an investigation into
Taiwan’s trade restrictions on 2,400 items to apply economic pressure on the DPP. This investigation ended on the eve of the election, with China assuring that the investigation would go away if Lai were defeated. An example of social pressure was when the CCP used social media platforms such as TikTok, a Chinese-owned app with around
1.218 billion active users, to spread misinformation about the Taiwanese national elections. This social media app regularly produces content that portrays
KMT and TPP candidates positively while treating DPP candidates negatively, going as far as removing pro-DPP content from the platform. This has already been proven by several sources, with Doublethink Lab stating that during the 2024 election, there were around
10,141 pieces of recorded suspicious information of China spreading disinformation coming not only from TikTok but also from YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X, Weibo, and many others. Some posts even went as far as to insinuate that the
DPP worked alongside the United States to build bioweapons. The amount of disinformation the CCP is spreading is just another example of how it will do anything and everything it can to influence as many people as possible to achieve its geopolitical goals.
Split Election Victory
The DPP’s third-term win was a significant achievement; however, Lai won by only
6.5 percent against “KMT candidate” Hou Yu-ih, compared to the 2020 election in which Tsai Ing-wen defeated her KMT opponent by more
than 15 percent. Another area where Lai and the DPP fell short was in the Legislative Yuan, where they lost the majority to the KMT. The last time Taiwan had a government in which the party of the president did not hold a majority in the legislature was in
2008, so despite the presidential victory, the Legislative Yuan elections tell a much different story.
The Legislative Yuan is the legislative branch of the Taiwanese government, with 113 delegates across all of Taiwan’s provinces. Seventy-three of these seats are regionally based seats where candidates are elected by receiving the most votes; thirty-four seats are allocated by party where a party’s total vote determines the number of seats they are assigned, with half of these seats being reserved
for women; and six seats are given to indigenous candidates from different communities across Taiwan. In this election cycle, the DPP lost ten seats, totaling fifty-one; the
KMT gained fourteen seats, totaling fifty-two; the TPP gained three seats, totaling eight, and the Independent party in Taiwan gained two seats for a total of two. The best way to summarize the elections in Taiwan this year is that
everyone is a winner, and everyone is a loser.
