Cautionary ambiguity. How Taiwanese elections push the prospect of war with the PRC

Most commentators noticed only the victory of the candidate from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan (DPP), which advocates the gradual acquisition of independence, but did not pay attention to the nuances of the situation at all. And, meanwhile, they are very important, filling the election results with many contradictory meanings, пишет journalist-observer Sergey Ilchenko for "DS".

Illustrative photo

Elections in Taiwan are held in one round - the candidate who wins a simple majority of votes wins. Lai Jing-Te, the current Vice President of Taiwan, received the support of 40,1% of the total number of voters. Hou Yu-yi, candidate from the Kuomintang Party — 33,49%, and Ko Wen-jie — candidate from the Taiwan People's Party (TNP) and former mayor of Taipei — 26,45%. Voter turnout was slightly more than 71%.

Thus, the post of President of the Republic of China remained for DPP for the third term in a row. Lai will take the place of Tsai Yin-wen, who served in this post for two terms - the maximum allowed by law, and Hsiao Bi-him, the former chief ambassador of Taiwan to the United States, will take his place. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has already congratulated Lai on his victory, saying that the US expects continued cooperation with the leadership of Taiwan. In response, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China protested, considering the congratulation a violation of the "one China" principle.

But, upon closer examination, the victory of supporters of independence from communist China does not look so triumphant. Be that as it may, Lai did not get an absolute majority of votes. But in the parliamentary elections, which were held simultaneously with the presidential elections, the Kuomintang took first place. And not just became the first, but significantly improved the result of 2020, got 14 places more — 52 against 38 (out of 113). DPP got 51st place, just one less, but still came second. In addition, she received as many as ten places less than she had in 2020. The reasons are mainly economic - for two terms, many claims have accumulated against the ruling party. Partly fair, partly due to the general economic situation in the world, but still associated in the minds of voters with her rule. In the TNP there are 8 seats (+3), two seats were won by independent candidates.

In Taiwan, there is a semi-presidential system of government, in which the parliament (Legislative Yuan) may not approve the prime minister appointed by the president, and the president may either propose another candidate or dissolve the parliament and call for new elections. It is unlikely that it will come to an open confrontation - Taiwan is still not Russia in 1993. The prime minister's candidacy will almost certainly be agreed upon in closed negotiations, having come to an agreement with the TNP. And, nevertheless, if in the previous two parliaments the DPP had a monomajority, now, in order to approve the government, it will have to seek support from the party. And also to think about the prospects of the 2028 elections and how to stop the decline in popularity. Because, although the majority of the population supports separation from mainland China, the TNP, let it maneuver, rather for it than against it, there are, however, everyday problems, purely economic.

An undoubted advantage of the past elections will be that their results will reduce the degree of conflict between the Kyrgyz Republic and the People's Republic of China, while giving both sides the opportunity to save face. Beijing received a consolation prize in the form of the Kuomintang's first place in the parliamentary elections and can now say that the idea of ​​returning to the mainland harbor is gradually winning, thanks to the peaceful - or relatively peaceful - efforts of the PRC. And if so, there is no point in fighting, but it is necessary to continue to use methods of peaceful persuasion. In turn, Lai, as well as the future prime minister, will be able to say that democratic Taiwan cannot fail to take into account the opinion of the supporters of the party that won the largest number of seats in the parliament.

As a result, the first post-election statements made by both sides turned out to be quite peaceful. Lai expressed the hope that Beijing would be able to understand the Taiwanese's desire for democracy. In reality, of course, they won't be able to, and they won't want to, but they can dream, all the more so, feeling the support of the USA behind them. In Beijing, they said that they would resolutely oppose any actions aimed at achieving the independence of the island, as well as the interference of external forces in a situation that China considers its internal affairs, but, at the same time, they would work with political parties and all layers of Taiwan society to promoting peaceful cooperation.

In fact, with support for independence among the Taiwanese, things are a little more complicated. There are three main problems in this topic: age, price of the question and identification.

The attitude of Taiwanese people to independence strongly correlates with their age. Among the youth, there are more supporters of complete secession from the PRC than among the older generation. This is natural - young people are used to de facto independence and freedom unthinkable in the People's Republic of China, and they do not want any other life. Taiwanese people are very well informed about the situation in the PRC, and most of them treat mainland realities, to say the least, coolly. Another issue is that many immigrants from the last wave associated with the fall of Kuomintang power on the mainland have relatives left on the other side of the strait. But the connection with her naturally weakens from generation to generation. People in the People's Republic of China and the Kyrgyz Republic live very differently.

Further, the perception of the situation is influenced by the fear of war. Even if Taiwan, with the help of the United States, fends off an attack from the mainland, it will cost him very dearly. Meanwhile, Taiwanese, as is usually the case in democratic countries, highly value their lives. In any case, they value them much more than the inhabitants of the neo-Maoist PRC, who, moreover, are 50 times more numerous. As a result, even the staunchest supporters of independence would prefer to go to it in a purely peaceful way, and if this is now impossible, they will preserve the indefinite status quo as long as possible, in the hope that a window of opportunity will open at some point. This logic determines the restraint of Taipei, which could respond to Beijing's armed provocations much more sharply, but does not do so.

And, finally, there is the problem of separate identification of Taiwanese from China. The slogan "we are one people" is Beijing's favorite instrument. Taipei, in turn, cultivates all possible differences in all areas of life, from the peculiarities of writing hieroglyphs to restaurant menus. However, all this is still difficult to fit into a single national project, different from the Chinese one - the bricks are painfully different. At the same time, the mentality of the Taiwanese is undoubtedly already Western, they have moved away from mainland China very much, but nation-building is still not finished, even yesterday. As a result, literally everything comes into play: the history of Taiwan as a Japanese colony that developed separately from China, moreover, both in a negative and a positive interpretation of this fact, and resistance to the Japanese - yes, the modern TNP borrowed its name from the party of Chiang Wei- shuya, created in 1927 to oppose Japanese fascism — which, by the way, caused discontent among the descendants of Chang Wei-shuya and the heads of the fund named after him. And the complex national composition of Taiwan, where, in addition to the Hakka Chinese, who have lived in Taiwan for centuries, there are also descendants of the first wave of immigrants from Fujian, and the second wave - fugitives from communists from all over mainland China, and, finally, the Malayo-Polynesian autochthons "Gaoshan", who lived there even before the first Chinese settlers, and partly preserved their own identity. True, only about half a million of the island's 23,5 million inhabitants are such, but 85% of modern Taiwanese are the descendants of mixed marriages between all these groups. However, the cultural influence of one of the groups often prevails in different regions of the island, which most directly affects the results of the elections. It is obvious that the attraction to China will remain until Taiwan's own national project takes on at least some form of completion.

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