Opinion | How Hong Kong’s protest crisis may have already sealed Tsai Ing-wen’s victory in Taiwan’s presidential election

With less than two months to Taiwan’s presidential election, Democratic Progressive Party candidate and incumbent Tsai Ing-wen looks a shoo-in, given her 16-percentage-point lead in recent polls over the Kuomintang’s Han Kuo-yu. Elections are full of surprises (as the 2004 Chen Shui-bian shooting incident shows), but Tsai’s victory may have arguably been sealed when Hong Kong’s protests descended into chaos.

On January 4, Chinese President Xi Jinping set alarms ringing in Taiwan by asserting that Beijing “makes no promise to renounce the use of force and reserves the option of taking all necessary means” to achieve unification and implement “one country, two systems” in Taiwan. The prolonged Hong Kong crisis has only stimulated the Taiwanese population’s feeling of being under threat and boosted support for autonomy.

Tsai has slammed “one country, two systems” from the onset of the Hong Kong protests, pinching Beijing’s nerve by urging solidarity among independent forces. Given Tsai’s surge in popularity after her outright rejection of Xi’s proposal, it is likely that she sees the benefit of capitalising on Hong Kong’s situation as outweighing the risk of a backlash from Beijing.

As could be seen at the “Taiwan with Hong Kong” rally in August, Taiwan’s young and politically active voters are increasingly sympathetic to their Hong Kong counterparts; the same concerns gave rise to the 2014 sunflower movement against economic integration with the mainland.

As a result, cross-strait relations became an overriding issue in the electoral debate, allowing DPP politicians and the media to divert discussions away from the domestic issues (such as pension reform and labour law amendments) that put Tsai at a disadvantage.

In comparison, Hong Kong’s protests have spelt disaster for the KMT opposition and Han – dubbed the “Communist Party representative” for his meetings with the head of the mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office, Liu Jieyi, and Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor earlier this year.