Tsai's election heralds a challenging future in Northeast Asia

Taiwan elected Tsai Ing-wen, the first female president in its 105-year history, on Saturday. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) also won the majority of parliamentary seats, which would likely to support the new president’s reign.

The key issue of this election was ordinary people’s livelihood. According to the opinion poll conducted by Taiwan’s Commercial Times, the biggest problem in the run-up to the presidential election was the economic downturn (41 percent) and the third major issue was the widening gap between the rich and the poor (12 percent). The country’s economic growth rate was in the range of 10 percent in 2010, but it plummeted to the two percent range on average for five consecutive years. The youth unemployment rate soared to 13 percent. The eight-year reign by the pro-China Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party made the country rely up to 40 percent on China so that if China coughs, Taiwan gets a bad cold. As the approval rating of the president-elect who claimed that Taiwan should be independent of China soared, the result of the election was a foregone conclusion.

Aside from economic issues, the cross-trait relation issues served as an advantage to Tsai. The scandal involving Tzu-yu, a Taiwanese member of a Korean girl band, also played a symbolic role. She danced wrapping herself with the Taiwanese national flag in a Korean television two months ago, and a Chinese singer took issue with it, which resulted in the former`s apology. This increased the anti-Chinese sentiment in Taiwan, and those in their 20s and 30s rushed to voting stations, claiming that they should punish the Kuomintang candidate who forced Tzu-yu to make an apology. Their contribution was critical to this election, resulting in the largest margin of votes in history (3.08 million votes).

Even the president-elect mentioned this four times a day on the day when she was elected and said, “No oppression (from China) is allowed.” In response, Beijing said through the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, a statement released by its foreign ministry and state-run media outlets, “We strongly reject Taiwan’s any attempt to seek independence.” This heralds challenging cross-strait relations at the outset.

Washington and Beijing paid attention to this election because they predicted that the victory of the opposition party would put a stumbling block to Taiwan’s pro-China policy. Tsai pledged during the campaign that she would strengthen cooperation with the U.S. and Japan. It is not a comfortable situation for China, which is on the offensive in the Asia Pacific region including disputes over the South China Sea. Leveraging Taiwan to check China is a key strategy for the U.S. Whereas the White House and Japan’s foreign minister issued a comment welcoming the change of power immediately after the election, Beijing has not released any congratulatory message as of now. Korea needs to focus on the strained relationship between China and Taiwan in that it causes the change in the dynamic of Northeast Asia.