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TAIPEI, Taiwan — The political engagement on this vibrant democratic island is obvious as Taiwan gears up for critical presidential and legislative elections on Saturday.
In Songshan Airport, a homecoming Taiwanese traveler at the luggage carousel hefts his bag emblazoned with an expletive-laden sticker urging the Chinese government to “free Hong Kong.”
Like thousands of other expatriate citizens of a polity that prohibits overseas voting, he has flown home to cast his ballot. The influx is reportedly testing the island’s hotel capacity. The Chinese Communist Party’s crackdowns on civil liberties in Hong Kong have sparked widespread concern.
In downtown Taipei, open-topped vans patrol the streets, their sides emblazoned with candidates’ images and electoral numbers. Perched on top, activists and supporters use bullhorns to blare electoral messaging at pedestrians and scooter riders.
At a street-side fried chicken restaurant, afternoon diners reach for their cellphones in unison. A Defense Ministry emergency warning zapped to all citizens via the island’s cellular network says a projectile — in fact, a satellite launched from the mainland — is flying over Taiwan’s airspace.
That strongly suggests the communist regime across the Taiwan Strait, which claims this island democracy as its territory, feels it has a stake in the elections in what some call “Free China.”
In the evening, TV channels run lengthy reports of candidates stumping islandwide in markets, streets and community halls, followed by lengthy analyses of who has momentum heading into the fraught campaign’s final days.
Everything is up for grabs. Taiwanese voters in the combined presidential/general election will choose a new national leader and the 113 members of the Legislative Yuan.
President Tsai Ing-wen, first elected in 2016, is barred by law from seeking a third four-year term. Beijing, Washington and capitals across the region will be intently watching the elections.
Although voter fatigue has weighed on Ms. Tsai’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, polls consistently put its presidential candidate in the lead. The DPP is also attempting to maintain its majority in the Yuan.
Weighty domestic issues are in play. Taiwan’s 23 million population is grappling with faltering wage growth, falling birthrates, soaring home prices and power grid problems.
None of these issues explains why the world is so focused on this election. China accuses Ms. Tsai and the DPP of harboring visions of an independent Taiwan and has been increasingly assertive toward the island since 2022. Chinese President Xi Jinping has instructed his military to be prepared for action against Taipei as early as 2027 to ensure that does not happen.
Taiwan thus finds itself the leading flashpoint in Beijing and Washington’s confrontation across economic and security domains, with ramifications certain to reverberate across the region.
The players, the parties
The DPP has nominated Ms. Tsai’s vice president and party chairman, Lai Ching-te, 64, also known as William Lai, as her successor. A former physician with a master’s degree from Harvard, he has a weighty political pedigree. Before serving as Ms. Tsai’s vice president, he was the island’s premier and mayor of Tainan.
Mr. Lai is the most anti-China of the presidential candidates and once called himself a “pragmatic worker” for Taiwan’s independence. He has toned down that talk, a red flag in Beijing. Instead, he promotes the continuance of the status quo while insisting that Taiwan will not bow to Chinese intimidation as it decides its future.
“While aspiring for peace, we harbor no illusions …,” Mr. Lai told reporters at a press briefing Tuesday in Taipei. “Our door will always be open to engagement with Beijing under the principles of equality and dignity.”
Mr. Lai’s running mate, Hsiao Bi-khim, boasts strong ties with the U.S. She has degrees from Oberlin College and Columbia University and has just completed three years as head of Taiwan’s diplomatic mission in Washington.
The leading opposition challenge is coming from the conservative Kuomintang, or KMT. The nationalist party was once headed by Chiang Kai-shek, who lost the battle for China to Communist Party founder Mao Zedong. In 1948, Chiang retreated to Taiwan, generating the persisting national division.
In a historical irony, the KMT now supports engagement and a more moderate posture toward Beijing and has sharply criticized the Tsai government for antagonizing the mainland and jeopardizing extensive cross-strait economic and trade links.
Its presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, 66, is a former law enforcement officer who also headed the national police university. He talks of upgrading the island’s defenses but says he would “avoid recklessness” toward China.
“The majority of people in Taiwan want to maintain this status quo,” Mr. Hou wrote in an article in the journal Foreign Affairs this month. “During the rule of the DPP, the lack of communication across the Taiwan Strait edged the situation closer to potential conflict.”
Younger voters, who have no memory of the political and other ties to the mainland, perceive the KMT to be out of touch.
“Does the younger generation see themselves in the mold of the DPP or the KMT?” asked Alexander Neill, a China security expert with Pacific Forum. “There are many in Taiwan who, though they speak Mandarin, do not see themselves as connected to the mainland in any way.”
The third major candidate and the dark horse in the race is Ko Wen-je, 64, of the Taiwan People’s Party. Another former physician, Mr. Ko founded the TPP and was elected mayor of the capital, Taipei. He is popular among younger voters, though his more accommodating approach to China largely aligns with the KMT’s.
Polling is prohibited 10 days before elections. In the last compilation of leading surveys, Mr. Lai led with a median rating of 36%, followed by Mr. Hou with 31% and Mr. Ko with 24%.
Those findings reflect long-term trends. Mr. Hou and Mr. Ko discussed joining forces in November, but they could not agree on a potentially game-changing alliance and now appear on course to split the anti-DPP vote.
All this points to victory Saturday for Mr. Lai and the DPP, which could have momentous consequences for the political alignment on the island. Analysts say a third consecutive loss for the KMT could prove disastrous and raise questions about the party’s long-term viability.
Despite widespread predictions that Mr. Lai will win the presidency, the DPP is unlikely to grab an outright majority in the unicameral Yuan, potentially giving Mr. Ko and the TPP a decisive, tiebreaking role in setting policy.
Why Taiwan matters
Whatever the outcome, Washington will be watching the elections closely.
President Biden has repeatedly rejected the long-standing U.S. approach of “strategic ambiguity” and said forthrightly that U.S. forces would respond to a unilateral Chinese military move against Taiwan. Serving generals, hawkish pundits and other American voices have warned about the threat and timing of a Chinese invasion.
Central to Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy is strengthening alliances with Japan and the Philippines, the democracies flanking Taiwan. Those alliances close maritime chokepoints that China’s navy must navigate to blockade the island.
Economic grand strategy is also in play. Taiwan is central to the high-tech supply chain as the world’s largest producer of advanced semiconductors.
The island’s economic clout and the prestige that would come with bringing it under mainland control make Taiwan a doubly rich prize for China, which is struggling under U.S. chip sanctions designed to hamper the growth of its domestic high-tech industries.
Beijing insists that Taiwan is an intrinsic part of China. Most of the world, including the U.S., accepts the “One China” policy, although Washington insists that any resolution of Taiwan’s ambiguous status be peaceful and agreeable to both sides.
Critics say the Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan. Beijing has repeatedly accused Ms. Tsai of harboring dreams of an independent Taiwan. In her final New Year’s Day address, she called for “peaceful coexistence” with Beijing.
“We do not provoke or surrender,” she said. “We have won the trust of the international community with unparalleled credibility and deepened cooperation with our democratic partners, allowing us to face the world confidently and firmly and to face China confidently and calmly.”
Friction with the mainland has risen under Ms. Tsai’s leadership.
Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, fears have mounted that China might move against Taiwan. Also in 2022, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi infuriated China by leading a congressional delegation to Taiwan, the highest-level visit by an American official in a quarter-century.
China has responded with an unrelenting campaign of intimidation, including test-firing missiles in the waters surrounding the island. It has upgraded the aerial “chicken game” over the Taiwan Strait by repeatedly sending warplanes over the median line and into Taiwan’s self-declared air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, stress-testing Taiwan’s air defenses.
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