The results are in. Taiwan’s voters stood up to China and all its war talk of recent weeks.
New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-ih, of the opposition Kuomintang, received 33.5 percent, and Ko Wen-je of the new Taiwan People’s Party came in third with 26.5 percent.
The election was historic. For the first time since 1996, when the island republic held its first democratic presidential election, a party has won a third straight presidential term.
Previously, the DPP, as the governing party is known, and the Kuomintang or KMT, traded the presidency every eight years.
The “Green” DPP represents people who think of themselves as “Taiwanese.” Consistently, more than 60 percent of the island’s 23.5 million people self-identify as “Taiwanese Only”—some polls show more than 80 percent—while generally fewer than 5 percent say they’re “Chinese Only.”
Mr. Hou’s “Blue” Kuomintang fled to Taiwan in 1949 as it was losing the Chinese Civil War and is seen as the party of the ethnic Chinese on the island. Many still consider them to be invaders, especially after the Kuomintang’s brutal “White Terror,” a four-decade campaign waged against the local—Taiwanese—population.
Beijing proclaims that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the People’s Republic of China and now favors the KMT, because, as a practical matter, China’s peaceful annexation of the island is possible only when Taiwan’s people believe they have a common heritage with those on the “mainland.”
“The timing is very unfortunate for the Hou campaign,” Ma Chun-wei of Tamkang University in New Taipei City told Singapore’s The Straits Times. “If Ma had said what he said two months ago, people might have moved on from it by now. But to say these things just a few days before the election will likely cost the party crucial median voters.”
Ma Ying-jeou, president of Taiwan from 2008 to 2016, undoubtedly scored points with the 1.6 percent of voters who want immediate unification with China, but certainly not with anyone else.
The former president, who had been campaigning for Mr. Hou, wasn’t invited to the most important KMT campaign event, a rally held the day before the election in New Taipei City.
Mr. Hou, by not including Mr. Ma, was trying to reassure voters that he wasn’t going to sell out Taiwan to China. His message throughout the campaign was that he was the best able to handle China and maintain the island’s democracy.
Unfortunately for the KMT, it has to appeal to both the Chinese in Taiwan, its core base, and native Taiwanese, who are beginning to dominate politics and have different aspirations than the Chinese.
China has overplayed its hand. “I think the people here are accustomed to the endless threats coming from China,” Bob Yang, a retired professor and a former president of the pro-Taiwan Formosan Association for Public Affairs, told Gatestone. “They seem to take them in stride.”
As Mr. Yang, now in Taiwan after campaigning for DPP candidates, tells us, China’s threats are wearing thin. A free people, living just a little more than 100 miles from the menacing Chinese state, refuse to be intimidated.
The Taiwanese heard Xi Jinping’s threats, became even more defiant, and have now cut him down to size.
The people of the small island of Taiwan aren’t afraid of large China. They’re an inspiration to free people everywhere.