Taiwan’s re-elected president in no hurry for China

President Ma Ying-jeou was elected to a second four-year term as Taiwan’s president, giving him a renewed mandate to press for closer ties with China that have eased decades-old tensions across the Taiwan Strait.


Ma, the 61-year-old leader of the ruling Kuomintang Party, defeated challenger Tsai Ing-wen, the Democratic Progressive Party chairwoman, by 51.6 percent to 45.6 percent, with all the votes tallied, the Central Election Commission reported on its website. The commission said 74.4 percent of Taiwan’s 18 million eligible voters cast ballots.


“This isn’t a personal victory, this is a victory for the Taiwan people,” Ma said at a rain-soaked victory rally in Taipei late yesterday. “The people have approved our efforts to shelve disputes and strive for peace across the Taiwan Strait.”


Ma’s victory is an affirmation of his effort to improve Taiwan’s relationship with China after decades of strained ties under his DPP predecessor and previous Kuomintang governments. A stable cross-strait relationship may also benefit U.S.-China ties as Washington seeks help from the leadership in Beijing to contain the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea.


No Chinese leader could acknowledge Ma’s status as ROC president, because to do so would be to accept that a separate China exists alongside the People’s Republic. That violates the so-called “one-China policy,” the central canon of Beijing’s approach to Taiwan for the past 62 years.


In its first reaction to Ma’s victory, China’s official Xinhua News Agency took a positive tone, reflecting Beijing’s view that he was a far better choice than challenger Tsai Ing-wen, whose party maintains its theoretical support for an independent Taiwan.


“The results of the elections have indicated that the peaceful development of the cross-strait relations is a correct path and has been widely recognized by the Taiwan people,” Xinhua said.


Although the Nationalists formally advocate unification between the sides, they reject the idea of doing so under mainland communist rule and have decisively sidelined the issue in favor of maintaining the status quo.


Chao Chun-shan, a China expert at Taipei’s Tamkang University, said that Hu’s imminent departure makes it unlikely that Beijing will press Ma to make a political deal anytime soon. If a Taiwan political gambit failed, Hu’s successors could come off looking bad while they are still in the relatively vulnerable position of just beginning to consolidate their power, Chao said.


“I don’t think there is room for talks on a political deal in (Ma’s) second term.” Chao said. “Economics is the first priority.”


There is considerable appetite in Taiwan for pursuing the kind of economic deals that Ma brought to fruition during his first term. Under his leadership Taiwan increased the number of direct mainland China flights, opened itself to large numbers of free-spending Chinese tourists and cut tariffs on scores on Taiwanese exports to the mainland.


That contrasts sharply with a strong local resistance to engaging China politically, out of fear that any deal could undermine the island’s hard-won democratic freedoms. Polls over the last 10 years have shown that no more than 10 percent of Taiwanese favor union with the mainland, with most of the rest supporting an open-ended continuation of Taiwan’s de facto independence.