Taiwan’s Status Quo Election

On January 13, Taiwan’s citizens will elect their next president. The candidates are framing the race in increasingly existential terms: for William Lai of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the choice facing voters is between democracy and autocracy. For Hou Yu-ih of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), the outcome will determine whether there will be war or peace in the Taiwan Strait. The third-party candidate, Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), has warned that only he can prevent war with China. Beijing has endorsed the KMT’s framing, and one official has ominously expressed the hope that Taiwan’s voters will “make the right choice between ‘peace and war.’”

Lai currently leads in the polls and is favored to win the race. Hou has, however, narrowed what was once a yawning gap and could pull off an upset. Despite their attacks on one another, the candidates are in fact broadly aligned on their foreign policy priorities. They largely agree on the need to invest more in defense, strengthen relations with the United States and Japan, and maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait by eschewing either de jure independence or unification with China. The candidates all seek to secure Taiwan’s de facto independence but disagree on the best way to do so. Hou and Ko place more weight on restarting dialogue with Beijing, which China cut off following President Tsai Ing-wen’s inauguration in 2016, whereas Lai prioritizes stronger ties with Taiwan’s partners.

This broad alignment is less surprising than it seems. An important consensus has emerged in Taiwan on national security issues since Chinese President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Taiwanese, regardless of their political affiliation, do not want Taiwan to become the next Hong Kong or Taipei to become the next Kyiv. To that end, they largely agree that the best way to protect their island is to invest in defense and to strengthen ties with the United States and other democracies.

From the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party, however, Taiwan’s very existence as one of Asia’s strongest democracies, and by some measures the region’s freest society, is a threat. Taiwan’s success reveals—despite the CCP’s claims to the contrary—that democracy and a majority ethnically Chinese society are not incompatible. Moreover, as China and Taiwan’s political systems continue to diverge, there is little support on the island for unification. Taiwan is increasingly anchored to the West, and its population broadly favors strengthening relations with Japan, the United States, and Europe.

To be sure, political debates in Taiwan remain fierce. Only three years ago, lawmakers hurled pig intestines at their colleagues to protest Tsai’s decision to open Taiwan’s market to U.S. pork. But Taiwanese voters’ choice of one candidate or another is very unlikely to alter Taiwan’s basic approach to foreign policy. The real threat to Taiwan, instead, lies in what Xi does after the polls close—and in the outcome of another vote, the November presidential election in the United States.

PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH

During Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency, which lasted from 2008 to 2016, Taiwan’s ability to deter a Chinese attack atrophied. Ma allowed defense budgets to stagnate, cut mandatory military service from one year to four months, and drastically reduced the size of Taiwan’s armed forces. Taipei continued to buy arms from the United States, but these purchases were made more for the political signal that they sent, of continued U.S. support for Taiwan, than for their contribution to the island’s combat readiness. As cross-strait exchanges grew, Taipei became complacent, believing that as long as the two sides were talking Beijing would not attack, so investing in defense was unnecessary and wasteful.

Two events, though, recently galvanized Taipei to take its defense more seriously. In 2020, Beijing passed a national security law for Hong Kong, which it has used to severely curtail civil liberties and political rights. The United Kingdom declared that this was in breach of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which Beijing pledged that Hong Kong would enjoy “a high degree of autonomy” after its return to China. Watching how Beijing ignored that promise and violated the “one country, two systems” framework, which it also proposes for Taiwan, left Taiwanese citizens with no illusions about what life would look like following unification. Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated authoritarian leaders’ willingness to resort to force to pursue their territorial ambitions, as well as the ability of a smaller military to thwart them.

Tsai has taken bold steps to reverse her predecessor’s policies. She nearly doubled the defense budget, extended the length of mandatory military service to one year, and began an overhaul of Taiwan’s reserve force, which is intended to supplement the military during a conflict. Tsai also invested billions of dollars in Taiwan’s defense industry, developing an indigenous submarine and, taking lessons from the war in Ukraine, prioritizing the development and production of drones and missiles.

SAFETY FIRST

All three candidates have similar backgrounds, having entered politics after successful careers outside of elected office. Hou was Taiwan’s chief of police, and Lai and Ko are renowned doctors. There is a further similarity: all candidates largely lack foreign policy experience. Hou's and Ko’s national security positions were mostly unknown before the race, and Lai was relatively uninvolved in managing foreign policy and cross-strait issues until he became the DPP’s nominee.

Despite their shared lack of experience, the candidates agree on the need to improve Taiwan’s defenses and are united in their support for most of Tsai’s defense policies. Lai has described the bolstering of Taiwan’s defenses as “the bedrock of our national security.” Hou, in a Foreign Affairs essay, introduced a framework of the “Three Ds”: deterrence, dialogue, and de-escalation. He concluded that “Taiwan’s most important priority should be to strengthen its national defense and deter the use of force by mainland China.” Ko’s party platform similarly asserts that “national defense is the cornerstone that upholds cross-strait and international relations.”

The candidates also broadly agree on how to best increase Taiwan’s defense capabilities. All three have emphasized the importance of pursuing an asymmetric approach that prioritizes the development and purchase of a large quantity of smaller systems and platforms, such as missiles, mines, and drones. Hou and Ko have both proposed increasing the defense budget to three percent of GDP, and Lai has stated that he would also oversee further increases to defense spending. Lai is in favor of one year of compulsory military service, whereas Ko has not challenged Tsai’s decision to extend conscription. He has even argued that one year may be insufficient for training specialized personnel. Hou’s position has been less consistent: although he initially called for undoing Tsai’s policy, he quickly reversed course. Notwithstanding that incident, Hou has put forward a robust defense policy platform. He has called for establishing a common operating picture across Taiwan’s military services that would better enable them to coordinate their operations. He has also proposed creating a cabinet-level All-Out Defense Mobilization Council, which would integrate planning across government with the goal of better enabling Taiwan’s civilian population to help defend the island.

This consensus on defense will be critical as the Chinese military threat continues to grow. Taiwan’s top national security priority should be ensuring that Xi does not have confidence that his military can achieve its objectives without paying such an unacceptable cost in blood and treasure that China’s continued modernization would be put at risk. Taiwan cannot prevent a war solely through dialogue with Beijing and it cannot bet its future on Xi’s goodwill. All three candidates know this, and they understand that Taiwan, accordingly, needs to do much more to deter aggression.

HANDS ACROSS THE WATER

The candidates also agree that Taiwan must strengthen its ties to the United States, Japan, and other democracies. Under Tsai, the United States and Taiwan have drawn closer. In 2022, Washington and Taipei launched an ambitious bilateral trade initiative and subsequently reached agreement on the first phase, which Taiwan touts as the first trade deal that the Biden administration has negotiated. Security cooperation has deepened, with Washington reportedly increasing the number of troops deployed to Taiwan to train its military and expanding the training of Taiwanese soldiers in the United States. Taipei’s ties to European democracies have also strengthened during Tsai’s presidency. Taiwan has opened a representative office in Lithuania and a growing number of European officials have visited Taipei. In 2023, the Czech Republic’s president-elect even spoke with Taiwan’s president, becoming the first European head of state to do so.

Taiwan and Japan have also become closer. This trend may prove critical for Taiwan because if a military conflict with China were to erupt, Japanese contributions to allied operations could prove decisive. Tokyo has already helped Taipei absorb the blow of China’s economic sanctions and supplied Taiwan with millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Japan has also become a full partner in the Global Cooperation and Training Framework, which the United States and Taiwan established in 2015 as a platform to leverage Taiwan’s expertise to address international challenges.

Lai has commented that “Taiwan and Japan are like a family.” To that end, he has vowed to pursue security cooperation with Tokyo if elected, and argued that Taipei should seek to join the Japan-led Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the region’s premier trade pact. Hou shares this desire for closer ties with Japan and, symbolically, made it the first country he visited after securing the KMT nomination. He, too, has stated that he would attempt to join the CPTPP, which would help Taiwan diversify its economy away from China. Ko also visited Japan as a presidential candidate, and his party’s platform calls for establishing a “robust trilateral security dialogue platform involving the United States, Japan, and Taiwan.”

None of the three candidates have proposed a meaningful break from Tsai’s foreign policy. All have stated that the United States is Taiwan’s closest and most important partner and vowed to deepen relations with Washington. In practice, this will translate to ever greater security cooperation and closer economic ties. Hou has even proposed conducting joint military exercises with the United States and pursuing interoperability, which would better enable U.S. and Taiwanese soldiers to fight together and support one another during a conflict. Both are steps that Beijing has long opposed. Lai and Hou have pledged to work with Washington to pursue secure and resilient supply chains by supporting the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade and called for Taiwan to join the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.

KEEPING BEIJING AT BAY

The candidates differ most on the question of how Taiwan should approach China. In particular, they disagree about the relative importance of communication with Beijing and the extent to which Taiwan should pursue greater economic, cultural, and other ties with China. All three candidates want to maintain the status quo, but they differ over the best way of doing so. This disagreement has led Hou to claim that Lai will pursue independence, triggering a war with China in the process, and Lai to counter that Hou will sacrifice Taiwan’s democracy and sovereignty to China.

Neither charge is warranted. Lai has explicitly stated that he would continue Tsai’s approach to cross-strait relations, repeating her position that “Taiwan is already a sovereign, independent country” and that it is therefore unnecessary to declare independence. It is unlikely that Lai would provoke China by pursuing de jure independence, as he understands that doing so would likely prompt a forceful Chinese response and undermine Taiwan’s international support. Nevertheless, if elected, Beijing would be highly unlikely to pursue dialogue with Lai. There would, instead, be another four years without official communication between Taipei and Beijing, which raises the risk of miscalculation.

At first glance, Hou’s position on cross-strait issues seems like a throwback to the Ma era. He has endorsed the 1992 Consensus, which the KMT defines as an agreement between Taipei and Beijing that there is one China, with each side holding a different interpretation as to which government is its rightful representative. (For the KMT, it is the Republic of China, not the People’s Republic of China.) China, by contrast, interprets the 1992 Consensus as meaning that there is only one China, that Taiwan is a part of it, and that the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China. Despite this disagreement on the meaning of the 1992 Consensus, it has nevertheless provided the political foundation for over two dozen agreements negotiated between Taiwan and China during Ma’s presidency. Hou has, however, attached important conditions to his cross-strait platform, including a rejection of “one country, two systems” and an insistence that any dialogue with Beijing would have to be consistent with Taiwan’s constitution. He has also pledged that “Taiwan’s future will be determined only by its own people” and acknowledged that “the majority of people in Taiwan want to maintain this status quo,” signaling that unification is not in the cards. Hou could, however, be constrained by the KMT’s deep-blue wing, which seeks closer ties to China, and to which Hou’s running mate and the candidate leading the party’s slate of legislators belong.

Ko, for his part, has said that Taiwan has no choice but to maintain the cross-strait status quo and that “there’s no point in even talking about unification or independence right now because you can’t achieve either.” Although Ko has not flatly rejected the 1992 Consensus, he has commented that “if the 1992 Consensus is a prerequisite, it is not going to lead us very far” and has suggested changing the name of the term. This comment shows just how unpopular the 1992 Consensus has become in Taiwan and simultaneously suggests an openness to establishing a new framework that Beijing could live with. It is unclear, however, whether Ko could introduce a formula that Beijing would deem acceptable.

Unification has never been popular among Taiwanese voters and has become decidedly less so over time. Although a desire for independence has grown over the past three decades, most voters would prefer to maintain the status quo indefinitely. As seen from China’s perspective, the prospect of voluntary unification has all but disappeared, and no presidential candidate can hope to win on a platform favoring unification. Regardless of who wins the presidential election, Taiwan is all but certain to reject political negotiations with Beijing over the next four years.

CURSING THE TIDE

Other factors at play in this election will worry Beijing. In particular, the passage of time and the divergent political trajectories of Taiwan and China have led to a consolidation of a unique Taiwanese identity. Over 60 percent of the population now identifies exclusively as Taiwanese, with 30 percent identifying as both Taiwanese and Chinese, and only 2.5 percent as Chinese. Reflecting these trends, for the first time ever, all the presidential candidates are native Taiwanese, meaning that their families came to the island before the Chinese Civil War.

Beijing always favors the KMT candidate, and this race is no exception, with China branding Lai a “destroyer of peace.” A Hou victory could be presented within China as evidence that unification is not moving out of reach, and China could then use the next four years to try to shape cross-strait dynamics in its favor. But even a Hou triumph would not reflect a turn toward favoring unification among the Taiwanese electorate: instead, it would more likely be a consequence of the electorate’s fatigue after eight years of DPP rule, a desire for change, and disappointment with how the government has handled domestic issues. This election cannot change the basic fact that, if unification were a company, it would have lost its market and would be on the brink of insolvency. Taiwan is dedicated to continuing to embed itself in the West, a process that is inimical to China’s interests. Ironically, a Hou victory could have the effect of signaling to Beijing that even the KMT cannot deliver the outcome that it seeks. The very fact that Taiwan is holding its eighth presidential election, an event that is now taken for granted as democracy has become a core component of its national identity, will be viewed in China as a risk to the CCP’s political narrative.

The question, then, is whether Xi decides that he can live with Taiwan’s trajectory or concludes that the trend lines are not moving in Beijing’s favor and that he should act to compel unification sooner rather than later. Entirely apart from Taiwan’s election, there are worrying signals that his thinking is moving in the latter direction. Xi has stated that the Taiwan issue cannot be passed on to future generations and that achieving unification is the essence of the country’s rejuvenation. He has called unification a “historical inevitability,” and as Xi faces growing economic headwinds, he may seek to make unification a major part of his political legacy.

The outcome of Taiwan’s election may do little to change Xi’s calculus. Indeed, it may not even be the most important election of the year for the island’s security. Rather, that could be the U.S. presidential election in November. A victory for former U.S. President Donald Trump, who has criticized Taiwan for stealing the United States’ semiconductor industry and reportedly asked what benefit could be derived from defending Taiwan, could prompt Xi to conclude that he would not have to factor in U.S. intervention, which would dramatically alter his calculus. Such a development could well upend cross-strait stability.