We should pay attention to the Taiwan elections (the Russians certainly are)

A reasonable argument can be made that every nationwide election has implications and consequences that transcend national borders. But this is true many times over for the votes that will be cast in Taiwan on Saturday, where an electorate of some 19 million people potentially holds in its hands the future of peace in Asia and beyond. In strictly national terms, the Taiwanese face a familiar choice. They are voting both for a new president and for a new parliament, with three main candidates and parties to choose from, and the issue is, as ever, relations with China.

The current vice-president and deputy leader of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, Lai Ching-te, is the continuity candidate, favouring de facto, if not de jure, independence for Taiwan and close relations with the United States. The main opposition candidate, Hou Yu-ih, is mayor of New Taipei City and from the Kuomintang (KMT) – whose leaders fled China after losing the civil war to the communists in 1949. The KMT accepts the concept of a single China but also supports a separate Taiwan. The third candidate, Ko Wen-je, is from the five-year-old Taiwan People’s Party, which also favours closer relations with Beijing but is seen as having more youthful appeal. A few smaller parties are also contesting the parliamentary elections.

Until recently, the presumption was a relatively easy victory for vice-president Lai. But the last permitted pre-election polls, last week, showed the gap between the DPP and the KMT narrowing to almost nothing, with the TPP a complicating factor that could tip the balance either way.

Whatever happens, it would appear that the clarity of the last four years, when the president enjoyed broad popularity and the DPP had a two-thirds majority in parliament, is likely to end. As in the US and France, the presidency is the more powerful institution but whoever becomes Taiwan’s next president could find their room for manoeuvre constrained, which could also afford China more opportunities for meddling. As in the past, Beijing has made no secret of its preference for a KMT victory, and it has been accused of stoking fears about its intentions in an effort to bolster candidates wanting to keep relations with China on an even keel. The result will show how far Taiwan sees itself better protected by a tough line towards China and a pro-US orientation or by a more compliant approach to Beijing.

And this is where the wider world comes in. The exact nature of any security guarantees the US might have given to Taiwan has been kept, deliberately, ambiguous. But the US has been a regular supplier of military equipment to Taiwan – approving arms sales worth nearly $695,000 as recently as August – and routinely sends naval vessels to patrol in and around the Taiwan Straits. As the US well knows, these are moves that China regards as provocations but its argument that it is acting to ensure international shipping lanes stay open is also valid, given the volume of world trade that passes through these waters.

But there are other reasons, too, why the result of a Taiwan election and any change in Taiwan-China relations that might ensue, has significance much further afield.

The first, and most obvious, is China’s growing diplomatic, military and commercial reach, its projects including its so-called Belt and Road initiative that projects Beijing’s interests far into other continents, as well as its recent excursions into international peace-making. These are all rather different propositions from the one-sided infrastructure projects China used to develop, with varying success, in parts of Africa and Asia. And while some countries, such as Italy, have had second thoughts about Belt and Road, China is now a global player in a way that it wasn’t, even at the time of the last Taiwan election four years ago.

The second reason might be summed up, obliquely perhaps, as the Ukraine question. Almost as soon as Russia had invaded Ukraine, in February 2022, parallels were being drawn – in security and academic circles – with China and Taiwan. If Russia could invade its apparently much weaker neighbour just like that, might China be emboldened to act as precipitately against Taiwan? And would a victory for Russia not make a Chinese move more likely? Was it not therefore imperative for Ukraine (and its Western backers) to win, not just for the sake of Ukraine’s independence, but to discourage a Chinese adventure against Taiwan?

A footnote to this might be the growing sympathy (and trade ties) between the Baltic states, especially Lithuania, and Taiwan, which appears to reflect mutual advantage not just in practice, but in principle – as an expression of support from one small, democratic, country feeling threatened by a giant authoritarian neighbour to another in a similar position. This has caused diplomatic difficulties for Lithuania with China and threatened EU efforts to tread the fine line between support for Taiwan and maintaining trade with China.

A third reason why the outcome of the Taiwan election could reverberate far beyond the immediate reason is what it might say, either now or in the immediate future, about US power. It is a moot point whether the US is a declining power. It remains dominant in many indicators, including those that matter most to its own population, such as per capita – rather than overall – GDP. But China has been catching up fast, including in military, and especially naval, capability.

Diplomatically, too, the US has been losing out to China in terms of winning friends and increasing influence. Western support for Ukraine has not been replicated in what is often termed the global South, and the US now finds itself almost isolated in its support for Israel in its war in Gaza. The Biden administration has been trying to adjust its position – making efforts to rein back Israel and facilitate more international aid for Gaza. This has also been a response to changing US domestic opinion at the start of a presidential election year.

It is hard to escape the sense that international dynamics are changing and that the international influence, if not yet the raw power, of the US is weakening. And this has raised the question of whether, if it came to it, the US would be capable of fighting, directly or indirectly, on three fronts: in Europe, for Ukraine against Russia; in the Middle East, for Israel against the various enemies ranged around its borders; and in Asia, for Taiwan against China.

This may not be a consideration in the forefront of Taiwan’s voters this weekend, but it will have to be something that Taiwan’s next president bears in mind. If the US lacks the capacity to sustain its many obligations and if, at the same time, there is a shift in global power away from the United States and towards China, what conclusions might it draw?

Whoever wins the presidency on Saturday will need a cool head and a broad lens through which to view the wider world. Taiwan is no longer, if it ever was, just an island of 23 million people off the coast of China; it has become a touchstone for the bigger forces moving nations and continents today.