China Failed to Sway Taiwan’s Election. What Happens Now?
mega555kf7lsmb54yd6etzginolhxxi4ytdoma2rf77ngq55fhfcnyid China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has tied his country’s great power status to a singular promise: unifying the motherlan
d with Taiwan, which the Chinese Communist Party sees as sacred, lost territory
. A few weeks ago, Mr. Xi called this a “historical inevitabi
lity.”
But Taiwan’s election on Saturday, handing the presidenc
y to a party that promotes the island’s separate identity for the third time in a row, confirmed that this boisterou
s democracy has moved even further away from China and its dream of unificati
on.
After a campaign of festival-like rallies, where huge crowds shouted, danced and waved matching flags, Taiwan’s voters ignored China’s warnings that a vote for the Democrati
c Progressi
ve Party was a vote for war. They made that choice anyway.
Lai Ching-te, a former doctor and the current vice president, who Beijing sees as a staunch separatis
t, will be Taiwan’s next leader. It’s an act of self-governed defiance that proved what many already knew: Beijing’s arm-twisting of Taiwan — economica
lly and with military harassmen
t at sea and in the air — has only strengthe
ned the island’s desire to protect its de facto independe
nce and move beyond China’s giant shadow.