MCLC: Taiwan prepares to vote

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Taiwan prepares to vote
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (1/4/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/world/asia/in-taiwan-elections-question-o
f-china-looms.html

Ties to China Linger as Issue as Taiwanese Prepare to Vote
By ANDREW JACOBS 

TAIPEI, Taiwan ‹ As he nears the end of his first term, PresidentMa
Ying-jeou faces a litany of challenges that might sound familiar to
Western politicians: stagnant wages, a growing wealth gap and steep
housing prices that have frozen young urbanites out of the real estate
market.

His main opponent in this month¹s elections has vowed to create well-paid
jobs, 800,000 units of low-cost housing and more generous subsidies for
retirees and farmers.

But when voters go to the polls on Jan. 14 ‹ only the fifth time they have
done so since Taiwan threw off single-party rule in 1996 ‹ they will also
be guided by their views on a separate, overwhelmingly important issue:
whether this vibrantly democratic island of 23 million should speed, slow
or halt its wary embrace of China.

The calamitous mainland civil war that drove the defeated Nationalists
here in 1949 left China and Taiwan in a formal state of war. China¹s
singular aim is reunification, even if it requires military force, and
each side has kept a wary eye on the other through decades of internal
tumult. The question of their fraught relations ‹ culturally close,
politically suspicious ‹ grows ever more urgent as China¹s wealth and
regional influence expand, and ever more obvious as mainlander tourism
here surges.

Mr. Ma, 61, a Nationalist, has overseen a raft of agreements that have
revolutionized the way ordinary Chinese and Taiwanese interact. There are
now direct flights, postal services and new shipping routes between Taiwan
and the mainland, and a landmark free trade agreement has slashed tariffs
on hundreds of goods.

The agreements opened the gates to the deluge of Chinese tourists ‹
213,000 arrived in November, 30 percent more than in November 2010 ‹ who
buoyed the local economy with more than $3 billion in spending last year.
Other firsts include a pair of giant pandas from China, an early reward
for Mr. Ma¹s Beijing-friendly gestures, and nearly 1,000 mainland students
who now study at Taiwan universities.

The burst of contact has reawakened old sensitivities and raised new ones.

Nathan Batto, a political scientist at the Academia Sinica, a research
institute in Taipei, said that the underlying issue for many voters was
whether Taiwan could remain autonomous.

³The single question that frames all elections here is who we are and what
do we want to be,² he said. ³Should Taiwan get closer to China or keep its
distance?²

The United States has not publicly weighed in on the race, but, privately,
some officials have expressed unease over the candidacy of Mr. Ma¹s main
opponent. She is Tsai Ing-wen, 55, an academic and former government
minister whose Democratic Progressive Party has traditionally advocated
formal independence. In the past, pushes for independence have irritated
China and worried Washington, Taiwan¹s steadfast ally and its supplier of
military hardware.

Beijing has not been coy in telegraphing its preference. At a recent news
conference, a spokesman for its Taiwan Affairs Office said a victory for
Ms. Tsai could ³inevitably threaten the peaceful development of
cross-strait ties.²
In Taiwan, the welter of factions includes indigenous residents and
descendents of the mainland Chinese who settled here decades, or even
centuries, before the Nationalists arrived. Business-minded Taiwanese know
where the money is: the million or so Taiwanese now working and investing
in China appear to be backing the Nationalists and Mr. Ma.

³We certainly don¹t want to jeopardize the status quo,² said Liu Chia-hao,
a spokesman at Taipei 101, an iconic green-glass tower that dominates the
Taipei horizon. Mr. Liu said that mainland visitors packing the building¹s
observatory and high-end shops helped the $1.8 billion project break even
three years early.

³We¹d like this vibe to continue,² he said.

Even in some of Ms. Tsai¹s party¹s traditional bases of support, like the
largely ethnic Taiwanese population of southern Pingtung County where she
was born, are tilting toward the Nationalists. Since 2008, mainland
officials, encouraged by Mr. Ma¹s new trade policies, have been offering
princely sums for every last mango, banana and orchid the Pingtung farmers
grow.

³President Ma promised he would open agricultural markets to China, and in
his first month he did,² said Cheng Cheng-ying, manager of the Taiwan
Floriculture Exports Association.

Invoking the blue flag of the Nationalists and the green of Ms. Tsai¹s
party, he said, ³If you ask my neighbors, they say they are green, but
inside they have all become a little bit blue.²

But warming ties have also stoked deeply rooted fears, fanned by Ms. Tsai
and her party, that the island is becoming too cozy with the authoritarian
behemoth next door.

³Let¹s face it, China wants nothing more than to devour us, and the K.M.T.
is giving us away,² Zhou Zhu-zhen, a retired nurse, said last month during
a rally, using an acronym for the Nationalists.

The race has been dominated by parochial concerns and mudslinging. Last
week, Ms. Tsai and her surrogates accused the president of using the
intelligence authorities to monitor her campaign illegally. The Ma camp
has been raising questions about Ms. Tsai¹s role in a state-financed
biotech company that yielded her handsome profits. Both have denied any
wrongdoing.

On paper and in person, the two bear striking similarities. Educated
abroad ‹ Mr. Ma at Harvard and New York University, and Ms. Tsai at
Cornell and the London School of Economics ‹ they spent their early
careers in academia. Both are reluctant campaigners, wonkish rather than
telegenic. Each promises generous social spending and a city¹s worth of
low-cost housing.

Polls suggest that they are in a statistical dead heat, with a third
candidate, James Soong of the People¹s First Party, pulling roughly a
tenth of the vote, mostly from the incumbent. Ms. Tsai hopes to prevail
with her party¹s traditional supporters: besides the island¹s native
Taiwanese and the farmers in the south, they include blue-collar workers
who dream of a return to the 1990s, when Taiwan was a high-tech
manufacturing powerhouse.

The front-runners dance gingerly around the issue of China. It emerges
mostly in the form of debate on the so-called 1992 Consensus, a nebulous
pact between Beijing and Nationalist Party leaders that allows both to
recognize the principle of one China, bypassing uncomfortable details. Ms.
Tsai, a former minister of the Mainland Affairs Council, which helps set
cross-strait policy, says the arrangement is a fiction. She wants the
voters to determine how Taiwan defines itself in future negotiations with
China.

Although she has dialed down her party¹s stridency on independence, Ms.
Tsai warns that Nationalist policies are eroding Taiwan¹s sovereignty. In
an interview 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/world/asia/interview-with-tsai-ing-wen.h
tml>, she offered a simple example of distasteful compromise: ³When
Chinese visitors come, we have to put away our flags,² she said.

Mr. Ma waves off such complaints, saying that détente has strengthened the
island¹s global standing.

Beijing has halted efforts to wrest away the few remaining countries that
recognize Taiwan diplomatically, and has removed its longtime opposition
to the island¹s participation in some international bodies. The last three
years of calm across the straits, Mr. Ma said, have been good for the
island and the region.
³Taiwan is no longer regarded as a troublemaker,² Mr. Ma said in an
interview 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/world/asia/interview-with-taiwan-preside
nt-ma-ying-jeou.html>, ³but as a force for peace.²