The January Taiwan Elections and the Implications for Cross-Strait Relations
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Abstract
Taiwan’s domestic politics, particularly presidential elections, has been the main driver of the island’s relations with China for two decades. The 2016 elections, in which the Democratic Progressive Party, led by Dr. Tsai Ing-wen, won both the presidency and majority control of the Legislative elections, promises to be no exception. Although PRC intentions under President Xi Jinping are far from certain, some change from the state of play under the current Ma Ying-jeou administration seems fairly certain, with implications for U.S. policy.
Bio
Richard Bush is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, and the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies. He came to Brookings in July 2002 after nineteen years working in the US government, including five years as the Chairman and Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan. He is the author of a number of articles on U.S. relations with China and Taiwan, and of At Cross Purposes, a book of essays on the history of America’s relations with Taiwan, published in March 2004 by M. E. Sharpe. In the spring of 2005, Brookings published his study on cross-Strait relations, entitled Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait. In 2013, Brookings published his Uncharted Strait: The Future of China-Taiwan Relations.
This talk is co-sponsored by the Taiwan Democracy Project in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative in the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
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Richard C. Bush
Senior Fellow and Director, Center for East Asian Policy Studies
Brookings Institution
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Taiwan's 2016 Presidential and Legislative Elections
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*Registration is now closed. For more information, please contact Kharis Templeman at kharis@stanford.edu.*
On January 16, 2016, Taiwanese went to the polls to elect a new president and legislature. The results were historic: Tsai Ing-wen of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won a landslide victory over two opponents, and the DPP won a comfortable majority in the legislature, giving the party full control over the central government for the first time. In contrast, the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), suffered its worst defeat in the presidential election since 2000, and its worst-ever defeat in the legislative elections, and it faces a long, difficult road to political recovery. This election was also notable for the entry into electoral politics of some of the leaders of the so-called "Sunflower Movement": the upstart New Power Party won five seats, becoming the third-largest party in the legislature.
This seminar will feature remarks by Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Affairs, and Kharis Templeman, the program manager of the Taiwan Democracy Project in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Dr. Diamond and Dr. Templeman will offer their thoughts about who won, why, what it means for Taiwan's democratic development, what to expect from the new government, and how it will affect relations between Taiwan, the United States, and the People's Republic of China.
This event is free and open to the public, and lunch will be served.
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Video from this event can be found here.
Taiwan's 2016 Presidential and Legislative Elections
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Larry Diamond
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Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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ldiamond@stanford.edu
Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.
Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad. A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).
During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.
Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.
Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.
Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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FSI scholars offer insight on historic China-Taiwan talks
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In the wake of the recent historic meeting of the leaders of China and Taiwan, the Stanford News Service asked two of the university's Asia experts about the aftermath of that meeting and its possible effects on political relations between the two countries, the military situation and Taiwan's Jan. 16 presidential and parliamentary elections.
The first presidential meeting between the leaders of the communist mainland and the democratic island, split by civil war in 1949, was held in early November on neutral territory in Singapore.
Kharis Templeman is the Taiwan Democracy program manager at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He recently wrote about why Taiwan's defense spending has fallen as China's has risen. Thomas Fingar is a distinguished fellow at Stanford's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He served as the chairman of the National Intelligence Council and in other key positions in Washington.
Do you anticipate any lasting effects from the face-to-face meeting of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou?
Thomas Fingar: At a minimum, the meeting appears intended by both sides to validate and lock in the much-improved cross-Taiwan Strait relationship that has evolved over the past several years.
Kharis Templeman: I do think the Ma-Xi meeting itself will have one lasting legacy: it has created a precedent for treating the directly elected president of the Republic of China as an equal and as the rightful representative of Taiwanese interests in cross-strait relations. From now on, leaders in Beijing are going to have a hard time arguing that a non-KMT (the Kuomintang, Taiwan's governing party,) president is illegitimate, as they did during the [former Taiwanese president] Chen Shui-Bian era, or to continue to insist on referring to Taiwan’s leaders as provincial-level officials. So, the next president will come into office somewhat strengthened by that precedent.
Will the meeting have any effect on the January elections in Taiwan?
Templeman: I don’t think it will make much, if any, difference. Taiwanese public opinion is deeply divided about Ma Ying-Jeou’s meeting with Xi. Ma himself remains quite unpopular, the economy is barely growing, and the KMT presidential candidate remains at least 20 points behind in the polls. There’s little indication that this meeting has shaken up what has been a large and steady lead for DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-Wen, and I would be shocked if she didn’t win a comfortable victory in January.
Fingar: Probably not. Beijing seems to have learned that its past attempts to influence elections on Taiwan have been ineffectual or counterproductive, and the meeting is unlikely to change minds or votes on the island.
How might the elections affect military spending on either sides, or China's aggressive island-building for military bases?
Fingar: The meeting will not have any effect on military spending or the building of artificial islands in the South China Sea, but Beijing may have hoped that agreeing to meet with Ma to demonstrate how "good" the relationship is might persuade Washington not to approve another round of arms sales to Taiwan. Regardless of who wins the election on Taiwan, the next administration is likely to seek another round of U.S. arms sales in order to prove that it has the support of the United States.
Templeman: The meeting will have no impact on the security balance in the region. Ma reportedly raised the issue of PRC (People's Republic of China) missiles within easy range of Taiwan, but Xi claimed, implausibly, that they were not targeted at Taiwan, and that was the end of it. The broader trends are unchanged: the PRC’s military budget is growing annually by double-digit rates while Taiwan’s remains essentially flat. The consequence is that the PRC’s capacity to take coercive measures against Taiwan continues to expand, even as cross-strait cooperation has been improved and institutionalized.
Dan Stober is at the Stanford News Service.
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Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore on Nov. 7, 2015.
Flickr/Office of the President Republic of China (Taiwan)
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Taiwan and the Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Re-appraisal
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This half-day symposium will bring together scholars and practitioners to reconsider Taiwan's prospects for entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership in light of the conclusion of negotiations in October 2015 and the election of a new president and legislature in Taiwan in January 2016. It will revisit the themes and conclusions of the Taiwan Democracy Project's 2013 annual conference.
9:00-9:15am: Introductions
9:15-11:00am. Panel 1: The Politics of Trade and Development in Taiwan
Stephen Tan, Vice President of the Cross-Strait Policy Association, Taipei
Kristy Hsu, Director, Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center, Chung Hua Institution for Economic Research, Taipei
Chung-ming Kuan, Chair Professor, Department of Finance and Director of CRETA at National Taiwan University, and former Minister of the National Development Council
Hung-mao Tien, President of the Institute for National Policy Research, and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Taiwan
11:00-11:15. Break
11:15-12:45. Panel 2: International Perspectives on the TPP: Implications for Regional Development and Geopolitics
Vinod Aggarwal, Professor of Political Science and Faculty Affiliate of the Center for East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
Nicholas Hope, Director of the China Program at the Stanford Center for International Development
Thomas Gold, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate of the Center for East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
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The Aborigine Constituencies in the Taiwanese Legislature
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The Republic of China on Taiwan has long reserved legislative seats for its indigenous minority, the yuanzhumin. While most of Taiwan’s political institutions were transformed as the island democratized, the dual aborigine constituencies continue to be based on an archaic, Japanese-era distinction between “mountain” and “plains” aborigines that corresponds poorly to current conditions. The aborigine quota system has also served to buttress Kuomintang (KMT) control of the legislature: the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and “pan-indigenous” parties have been almost entirely shut out of these seats. Nevertheless, aborigine legislators have made a modest but meaningful difference for indigenous communities. The reserved seats were initially established during the martial law era as a purely symbolic form of representation, but during the democratic era they have acquired substantive force as well. Taiwan’s indigenous peoples have not always been well-served by their elected legislators, but they would be worse off without them.
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Threats, Alliances, and Electorates: Why Taiwan's Defense Spending Has Fallen as China's Has Risen
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Over the past 20 years, the military balance between the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan has rapidly shifted. As China’s defense budget has grown annually at double-digit rates, Taiwan’s has shrunk. These trends are puzzling, because China’s rise as a military power poses a serious threat to Taiwan’s security. Existing theories suggest that states will choose one of three strategies when faced with an external threat: bargaining, arming, or allying. Yet for most of this period, Taiwan’s leaders have done none of these things. We explain this apparent paradox as a consequence of Taiwan’s transition to democracy. Democracy has worked in three distinct ways to constrain rises in defense spending: by intensifying popular demands for non-defense spending, introducing additional veto players into the political system, and increasing the incentives of political elites to shift Taiwan’s security burden onto its primary ally, the United States. Together, these domestic political factors have driven a net decline in defense spending despite the rising threat posed by China’s rapid military modernization program. Put simply, in Taiwan the democratization effect has swamped the external threat effect.
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Taiwan's Democracy Challenged: The Chen Shui-bian Years
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Of Paradigms, Politics and Principles: The 2016 Taiwan Elections and Implications for China’s Security Strategy and Cross-Strait Relations
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Sponsored by the Taiwan Democracy Project and the U.S. Asia Security Initiative at the Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC)
Abstract
During the recent meeting between PRC President Xi Jinping and Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, the “1992 One China Consensus” served as a mutually acceptable paradigm for maintaining “peaceful and stable” conditions across the Taiwan Strait. For Xi Jinping, the warmth of the visit thinly veiled a message to Taiwan’s leaders and electorate, as well as to onlookers in Washington. Chinese officials and media clearly link the talks and confirmation of the 1992 Consensus to “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”—a concept that is increasingly unpalatable to many in Taiwan. Xi hopes to keep DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (and perhaps even future KMT leaders) in the 1992 Consensus “box” and to co-opt the U.S. in this effort, but perhaps underestimates the political transformation underway on Taiwan.
The Xi administration has also hardened its position regarding “core interests” such as Taiwan, embodied in a “bottom line principle” policy directive that eschews compromise. Although many commentators and most officials across the region have shied away from stating that the PRC and Taiwan are at the crossroads of crisis, the collision of political transformation on Taiwan and the PRC’s “bottom line principle” will challenge the fragile foundations of peaceful cross-Strait co-existence. Changes in the regional balance of military power brought about by a more muscular People’s Liberation Army compounds the potential for increased friction, providing Beijing with more credible options for coercion and deterrence.
This talk will consider the politics and principles involved in cross-Taiwan Strait relations in light of the upcoming 2016 Taiwan elections and the policies of the Xi Jinping administration; and will discuss some of the possible implications for China’s national security policy, regional stability, and the future of cross-Strait relations.
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2016 Taiwan Elections and Implications for Cross-Strait and Regional Security
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Cortez Cooper
Senior International Policy Analyst
RAND Corporation
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