The heat is on in Taiwan as the start of the island’s presidential campaign season looks certain to stir up the already complicated three-way diplomatic dance between Taipei, Beijing and Washington.
The lead-up to the vote in January 2020 will play out against a backdrop of unusually high tension, with hostilities between the two sides of the 100-mile strait increasing at the same time as the United States and China are clashing on anything and everything from trade and technology to human rights and security.
The presidential front runners are already testing the political waters as they try to build their support bases.
Taiwan’s embattled President Tsai Ing-wen, who is seeking re-election for her pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), has been trying to cement ties with Washington with a series of recent publicity offensives. Tsai used an interview with CNN to announce her nomination campaign, and a stopover in Hawaii last week to speak via Skype to the right-wing Heritage Foundation in Washington. In that interview, she thanked the US for its support of Taiwan and urged it to supply the island with advanced fighter jets that would enable it to counter military intimidation by the Chinese mainland.
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Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in Hawaii. Photo: Kyodo
Meanwhile, Tsai’s potential rival, Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), has been touring mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau to build relationships and seek business contracts for the local economy under his jurisdiction.
Han’s high-profile meetings with senior Chinese officials, including Liu Jieyi, the director of Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, have met a backlash in Taiwan, where most people are sceptical of Beijing on a political level, even if they are China-friendly when it comes to the economy.
Tsai currently lags challengers from both ends of the political spectrum. Polls suggest she is behind both her former premier William Lai Ching-te, who is known for his anti-Beijing agenda, and various pro-Beijing candidates – including the KMT’s Han and Eric Chu (the former mayor of Taipei) and the independent politician Ko Wen-je, who is the current mayor of Taipei.
