Twenty years on, Taiwan is still struggling to shake off China's embrace

In the last days of campaigning in Taiwan’s presidential election, questions of war and peace were never far from the candidates’ minds.

“If [you] don’t vote for the nationalists, the future is really uncertain,” President Ma Ying-jeou said in his final campaign speech. “Our policy is aiming for peace and stability. We can assure everyone that there won’t be a war across the Strait.” Tsai Ing-wen, the candidate for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who is forecast to win with a substantial majority, also directed attention to the theme. “All countries must work hard together,” she said ahead of today’s election, “to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait.”

War across the Taiwan Strait? Is that something we should worry about?

Well, maybe. The problem is that, although the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China (China) have been ruled as two countries with two systems since Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang fled to the island at the end of the civil war, it is a reality that Beijing has never accepted. “Reunification” has always been the goal.

One understands why. In its attempt to right the wrongs of the “century of shame”, when Chinese territory was carved up by the colonial powers, Beijing has had no hesitation in appropriating entire regions, notably Tibet, where its historic claims are seemingly as persuasive as America’s claim to the Moon. So why would it finesse a claim to Taiwan, where 98 per cent of the population is ethnically Chinese?

Yet, it’s a claim – or, to put it more accurately, a threat – about which the 23 million people of Taiwan are ever more leery.

The reason may strike us in Britain as odd. After all, it’s only a few months since the PRC’s President Xi Jinping was riding down the Mall with the Queen, and George Osborne was imploring the communist Chinese government, “Let’s stick together and make a golden decade for both our countries.”

But in Taiwan they see these things very differently. Sticking together, the policy of the Kuomintang (nationalist) President Ma Ying-jeou over the past seven years, has put Taiwan in the doldrums: this year, GDP growth is expected to be less than 1 per cent. Youth unemployment is soaring. The brightest of the young are voting with their feet, fleeing abroad for work – ironically, many find better opportunities in mainland China itself. The Chinese behemoth may be slowing down, but Taiwan got there before it. Taiwan’s dilemma is reminiscent of that of countries such as Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union, already on the skids, kept its Warsaw Pact satellites clasped firmly to its capacious bosom.

Taiwan’s problem is that, because the US – and, indeed, practically the whole world – kowtows to China’s “One China” claim over the island, its freedom of action is strictly limited. Nearly 40 per cent of trade is with the mainland, as is two-thirds of foreign investment.

Beijing’s policy over the seven years of President Ma’s rule has been one of “ever-closer union”, with successive trade deals and the lifting of travel bans. But, with the shrivelling of economic growth in recent years, the charm of the Chinese embrace has faded. Instead, it’s the menace and the intimidation that are resented.

Taiwan has been a functioning democracy only for the past 20 years, but it is immensely proud of the achievement and conscious of how that marks it off from the mainland. It paid keen attention to the brave but fruitless mass struggle of the people of Hong Kong to wrest the right to choose their own candidates from Beijing.

Like Hongkongers, the Taiwanese watch in consternation as rowdy crocodiles of mainland tourists tramp across their beauty spots. They pay close attention to Beijing’s ever more arrogant assertions of hegemony over its neighbourhood, with its claim to almost the entire extent of the South China Sea. And they note that, throughout the years of growing concord under Kuomintang rule, Beijing has taken no steps to remove the 700 or so missiles permanently pointed at the island.

All of these pressures and resentments underline the DPP juggernaut, which promises to give Tsai Ing-wen, a lawyer trained in the US and at LSE, a formidable mandate.

People familiar with her emphasise her cautious, ultra-prudent style. Not long ago, she touted Margaret Thatcher as her favoured role model. Noting how poorly that went down with young Taiwanese – as well, no doubt, with Beijing – she prefers these days to compare herself to Angela Merkel. Stability and prudence are her favoured themes.

“We want to maintain the status quo,” her senior party colleague Joseph Wu said this week – in other words, to avoid antagonising Beijing to the extent that tensions between the two Chinas rise. But, as he went on to say, “We want to maintain the democratic way of life.”

As mainland China falters, Taiwan is increasingly eager to shake off its embrace. But the dangers are plain. A former engineer and a DPP supporter in the south, 60-year-old How Chang-cheng, put it like this: “China talks about resolving the tensions, but they are still pointing 700 missiles towards us. One could come flying over any time. We must try to protect our democracy. China will try to take it away from us. But if we step over the red line, there could be war. Maybe that’s why we need someone calmer, like Tsai. Maybe she can make a difference.”