Taiwan’s Mayoral Elections: Beijing Worries and Rejoices, U.S. Re-evaluates

China and the U.S. clearly have divergent views on the results of the Taiwan mayoral elections. From the perspective of cross-strait relations, Beijing is largely happy with the results but inevitably is nervous about the future of the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT].

From the perspective of Taiwan-U.S. relations, while Washington views the results as positive for national interests, it is re-evaluating the campaign capability of Ma Ying-Jeou’s government.

Campaign strategies a mixture of new and old: unpredictable results

Beijing is happy that KMT has secured Xinbei, Taipei and Taichung cities yet is worried for KMT as KMT has lost significant percentages of votes in this election. What shocked Beijing even more was that the Democratic Progressive Party’s [DDP] campaign included massive use of flexible strategies such as large-scale concerts, meetings to hear the views of the community, small-scale meetings and the Internet. DPP also engaged in traditional strategies such as sweeping the streets, visiting traditional markets and large-scale rallies. Both new and traditional methods were used flexibly in response to local conditions, resulting in unique combinations used in each city.

On the contrary, KMT kept to traditional campaign strategies including televised debates, meetings to hear the political views of the public, sweeping the streets and visiting traditional markets. Perhaps Beijing thinks that the combination of traditional and modern campaign strategies will pioneer a new trend in future. This may indicate that results of elections will be more complex and more unpredictable.

The U.S. is sure that democracy in Taiwan is on the right track. Yet Washington is puzzled as to why elections in Taiwan are always marred by shooting incidents. The U.S. believes that KMT winning 3 of 5 mayoral seats will help Ma’s re-election as president in 2012. After all, just considering the issue of mutual trust, Washington would rather consult with KMT.

Beijing is shocked that the DPP, for the first time in mayoral elections, matched KMT in the numbers of representatives. After failures in both legislative and presidential elections in 2008, the DPP unexpectedly was still able to make a comeback, and was equal in strength to the KMT in the mayoral elections. This shows that DPP, under the leadership of Chairman Tsai Ing-Wen is able to rise above the notoriety of corruption and emerge as a worthy challenger.

Beijing is also amazed that DPP could have performed so well despite fielding candidates who were not local to the areas such as Su Tseng-Chang, Tsai Ing-Wen and Su Jia-chyuan. Yet Beijing also understands that DPP would not be able to withstand such fights unless with popular and famous candidates of their own like Eric Chu.

Too early for military and political negotiations

The U.S. knows that DPP’s victories in the North and Taichung could be said to be largely a combination of factors — the time (fine weather, ECFA economic benefits slowly emerging, crowds at the opening of the Flora Expo, the coming into effect of the EU visa waiver), geography (the north is traditionally more for DPP than KMT), people (Lien Sheng-wen or Sean Lien who was shot on the eve of elections, cross-strait relations progressing). However, Washington may start to question: Would the DPP, who is not grooming new talents but managing places instead, be so lucky every time?

To Beijing, the results of the elections should help stabilize and deepen cross-strait relations. President of the Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) Chen Yunlin will visit Taiwan on schedule to meet with the Chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chiang Pin-Kung. ECFA follow-up negotiations will continue so as to deepen mutual trust. Expanded cross-strait trade has benefited the three ‘middles’ (small-medium enterprises, middle-lower class, central-southern regions), and should be the goal of Beijing’s future efforts. However, just from observing the results of the recent elections, Beijing may be forced to temporarily put aside cross-strait political and military negotiations.

Facing an ever-challenging North Korea, Washington should be grateful towards the KMT government for ensuring the stability of cross-strait relations. In July 2009, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg argued that both sides should hold negotiations on confidence-building measures. However, in this time’s five-city mayoral elections, Taiwan voters have used their votes to tell the U.S. that such negotiations are too early to be conceived.

(The writer is a professor at the Graduate Institute of American Studies at Tamkang University.)