I made sure to get a long night’s sleep before waking up intentionally late on the morning of January 11, 2020. I knew I would need the rest. I was in Zhongshan District 中山區, Taipei, having finally made my way back to Taiwan more than a year and a half after my previous gap year in East Asia allowed me the opportunity to live and study in the peculiar island country for six months. Having just landed the day before at the venerable Taoyuan International Airport, I had made the obligatory one hour ride up the serpentine Taoyuan Airport MRT line through the same riotous, opaque subtropical foliage that was thoroughly seared into my mind’s eye from the very first time I made the trip in 2017. As the train continued to incise the wall of mountains surrounding the Taipei Metropolitan Area, the feeling of reverent expectation that accompanied that first maiden trip into Taipei, as if I was a supplicant on a pilgrimage or a member of a tribute mission to an imperial city, started to well within me once again. Throughout the ride, I stared intently, leaning my forehead on the heavily tinted glass of the exquisitely clean MRT train interior, hoping to absorb as much of the visual feast sprawling tantalizingly outside as I could. Alas, the tinted glass and nighttime darkness seemed this time to conspire against me, stymieing my attempts to glimpse outside with cruelly habile proficiency.
The Airbnb rental that I had booked in advance turned out to be a decent offering, a relatively airy and spacious studio replete with chrome fixtures and within walking distance from Zhongshan Station. Everything from local Taiwanese fruit stands to sprawling Shin Kong Mitsukoshi outlets could all be reached within five minutes from the rental. The locale around Zhongshan Station is also uniquely familiar territory for me, as my apartment rental during my gap year was in neighboring Datong District (大同區) just south of one of Taipei’s largest food dispensaries: Ningxia Night Market.
Above all, I was especially pleased with the location as my Airbnb was situated strategically close to the events that would unfold the next day with the much awaited presidential election. It was largely on account of the election, after all, that I found myself back in Taipei in the first place.
Prelude to the Election: Taiwanese Politics Pre-2020
I first started following Taiwanese politics only after a major incident involving the island’s ambiguous political situation received extensive coverage by major news outlets in Korean portal sites. In November 2015, Chou Tzuyu 周子瑜 (of the popular K-pop girl group Twice) appeared on the Korean television program “My Little Television”, where she made nonchalant references to her Taiwanese heritage and waved a R.O.C. flag. The ensuing bifurcation of outrage between the two sides of the cross-strait vigilante war, both online and offline, demonstrated not only the hazards of content broadcasting untethered from any expertise in international relations but also the contours of a fundamental contention of labels (e.g. breakaway province vs. independent country) pertaining to the very identity of an island polity.
As a Korean, I felt a certain identification with the curious case of Taiwan, the current territorial division of the Korean peninsula being the result of the same Cold War political order that still defines the politics of cross-strait relations in the 21st century. In this light, East Asia can be noted to be a region with truly significant historical retention, as such vestiges of the tumultuous 20th century as one party regimes in China, North Korea, and Vietnam, Cold War divisions on the Korean peninsula and across the Taiwan Strait, and historical kerfuffles and territorial skirmishes between Japan and its neighbors over disputed islands and history continue to mark the diplomatic scene across the critical region. In addition, with around a quarter of the entire world’s population living in the region, East Asia’s unanswered historical questions are profound issues of global import.
In Taiwan, as is the case elsewhere in East Asia, yesterday’s politics are thus very much a part of today’s reality.
I got to glimpse these realities firsthand during my gap year in Taipei. The overall picture at the time (late 2017 to mid 2018) seemed to be a mixed one. On the one hand, the immediate political horse race seemed to favor a revived Kuomintang. The beleaguered yet venerable political organization, a true dinosaur from the past century, had shown moments of impressive political flexibility and finesse in the current century, as when it pursued a model for positive cross-strait relations and economic/cultural collaboration under President Ma Ying-jeou 馬英九. The 2016 landslide election of the DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen 蔡英文 over KMT New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu 朱立倫 was a political sea change. The gelid (and highly noticeable) turn in attitude towards Taiwan by the mainland and the attention of the western-led foreign press towards a relatively obscure region’s politics opened a new chapter in the island’s already severe political polarization and a new front in the United States’ superpower rivalry with a surging mainland China.
The opening of that front was made obvious in the early days of the Trump administration, expressed through such episodes as answered phone calls and gargantuan arms sales. Perhaps this was a more natural foreign policy progression for the Republican Party, which was, despite its post-Nixon inflection, the traditional party of the old R.O.C. China Lobby during the Cold War. More recently, visits by GOP governors to the island received coverage in local Taiwanese media. That a stark ideological shift away from mainland China and the CCP would follow the dual election of the DDP in Taiwan and of Trump’s GOP in the United States might have therefore been a fait accompli. Perhaps in terms of cross-strait relations as well, the year 2016 was a major inflection point.
But, as mentioned above, the KMT did seem to surge during my time in Taiwan. And though I am admittedly assisted by looking at things back then while knowing the results of the 2018 Local Elections in Taiwan, the mood shift towards the KMT at the time of my stay (a few months before the KMT landslide victories that fall), whether detected through political rallies or just conversations with ordinary people, was palpable during my stay. Indeed, Tsai’s approval ratings were dismal through the local elections and for most of period leading up to the presidential election. Most of this raw momentum towards the pan-blue coalition seemed to have stemmed more from the shortcomings of the Tsai administration than from any brilliance from the KMT. And most of the shortcomings were inextricably tied to domestic issues, from a vacuous domestic scorecard (a criticism that KMT rival Han Guo-yu later used against Tsai by claiming her administration could be defined by the hanzi 空 or empty during a three candidate debate with Tsai Ing-wen and James Soong right before the election), such episodes as the one shown in the picture below, and her more radical social stances that alienated many in a fundamentally socially conservative East Asian society. Also, despite Tsai’s efforts to segue away from cross-strait economic reliance on mainland China through such initiatives as the so-called New Southward Policy 新南向政策, the administration’s general push to reduce reliance on its massive neighbor China faltered, leaving Tsai exposed to attacks from both those who wanted less interaction with China and those who wanted a return to the warmer diplomatic relations enjoyed during the Ma administration.
Yet Taiwanese politics is not something that can be properly defined solely by horse race politics, partisan divisions, or even diplomatic shifts. With the results of the presidential election now known, it is clear that deeper social attitudes regarding the identity of Taiwan and its people still played a defining role in the campaign, despite the KMT’s best attempts to make the election a referendum on Tsai Ing-wen’s leadership. Regarding the single fundamental question of identity, it was clear to me that the majority of people I spoke to in Taiwan, and especially the young, firmly identified as Taiwanese or at least both Taiwanese and Chinese. And despite the Kuomintang’s best efforts to quell the conflation of Mayor Han’s populism with anti-Taiwan politics (with Han Guo-yu even going as far as to pronounce that China would achieve “one country two systems” 一國兩制 over his dead body), the narrative that, at least during this election season, voting KMT meant the loss of Taiwanese sovereignty was influential throughout the campaign. Subsequent conversations I had with Taiwanese students at Berkeley and more recently with those at Yonsei University (my exchange university in Seoul, South Korea) also revealed the same deep seated anti-CCP anxiety that powered the spectacle of months of continual protest in Hong Kong leading up to the 2019 local elections in the Hong Kong SAR. As a Taiwanese classmate recently told me before the election, she was neither blue nor green (a reference to the KMT-led pan-blue coalition and the DDP-led pan-green coalition) but voting for Han this time would mean the loss of Taiwan itself. For a majority of the young, the political patois glimpsed during the 2020 R.O.C. presidential election season was not simply another rank example of otherization conducted in the name of political expediency but a matter of existential importance: a matter quite literally of national survival.
Of course, the surge of Han Guo-yu during the tail end of 2018 added another dimension to this anxiety. I first encountered the name Han Guo-yu during a trip to Kaohsiung in May 2018. While wading my way through a hopscotch offering of intermittent qilou 騎樓, I came across several campaign posters for the upcoming local elections. Han’s name immediately commanded my attention as it contained the exact Chinese characters comprising the word “Hanguo” or Korea. After his upset victory in solid-green Kaohsiung in November 2018, it seemed that Han fever, sometimes expressed through the term 韓流 or K-wave, seemed as unstoppable as the other waves of right-wing populism that was sweeping the west. Embedded deep within his campaign was a visceral need for economic revival for the city of Kaohsiung. The city was historically the crown jewel in Taiwan’s successful export oriented industrialization during the latter half of the twentieth century and a model for the modern-day SEZ’s (most notably Shenzhen 深圳) of mainland China. However, the city faced sharp dotage during this century after being eclipsed by copycat urban projects in the mainland. Even within Taiwan, its standing faced decline with Taichung now surpassing Kaohsiung to take up the mantle as the second largest city in Taiwan. Candidate Han was able to successfully convert this economic anxiety to a political wave of right-wing populism through his own unique personal life story, idiosyncratic behavior and comments, and vigorous recitation of the phrase 發財 “get rich”. And this energy was not endemic only to Kaohsiung as the Han Guo-yu phenomenon began to spread across Taiwan and beyond (as the victorious mayor began making highly publicized trips to mainland China and American university campuses).
Indeed, the same polls that showed a drowning Tsai Ing-wen revealed Han Guo-yu to be holding devastating leads in hypothetical presidential match-up scenarios, even narrowly leading the venerable, well-liked R.O.C. Premier William Lai 賴淸德 who headed the Executive Yuan 行政院 during the last two years of President Tsai’s first term.
However, as news of more ominous developments from mainland China (in many ways direct corollaries of Xi Jinping’s approach to governance) began to spread in Taiwan (i.e. Xinjiang, Hong Kong), the DPP’s attacks against Han Guo-yu began to gain resonance. Unlike politics in the west, in which populist movements and nationalism are often joined at the hip, the 2020 R.O.C. Presidential Election showcased a rather unique case in which right-wing populism and nationalism (Taiwanese nationalism in particular) maintained a thoroughly adversarial relationship. Indeed, it seemed that the surging right-wing populism that defined the early part of the election was incompatible with the Taiwanese nationalism that dominated public discourse on election day.
Election Day
After starting the day with some impossibly sweet atemoyas, my mother and I wandered to the ground floor of our building where we spent a few minutes watching in eager expectation while a street vendor prepared several scallion pancakes and chives pies on a glistening bed of grease.
The sky was a ripe blue, of a rich hue endemic to subtropical Taiwan, tinged white by some intermittent clouds. The air was relatively temperate. It was January, after all, a good few months before more intensely humid temperatures and saccharine blue skies would begin to appear in preparation for summer. The neighborhood, despite its hyperbolic appearance, was relatively quiet with very little road traffic and a rather thin concentration of pedestrians populating the walkways beneath the various buildings.
Every so often, campaign signs would also populate the space of these already intimately packed walkways. The landscape mimicked the hyper-politicization of city infrastructure that marked the last months of my time in Taiwan during my gap year. At the time, all urban surfaces, including even sides of buses, seemed ripe territory for individual campaign posters, advocacy broadsides, and banners adorned with punching, bold slogans. That scene recreated itself this time in the form of small and large posters around Linsen Park for opposing candidates vying to represent the Taipei City’s Third Constituency (the district of my Airbnb) in the Legislative Yuan.
We then headed south towards the headquarter locations of the various parties, going first towards the DPP headquarters across the street from the Central Art Park 中央藝文公園 in Zhongzheng 中正區 District. On the way, we stopped by the Hope Market 希望市場, a sort of weekend farmers market that showcases local products from rural Taiwan.
After incising through the crowds in Hope Market, we headed south again. Instead of going straight east towards Tsai Ing-wen’s election headquarters 總部, a mere stones throw away from the market, we decided to look for some of the actual voting action happening in the city, while visiting a local landmark, Shandao Temple, on the way. We soon found a polling station inside a building with a prominent name plaque identifying the structure as belonging to the 中國佛教會 or the Buddhist Association of the Republic of China (BAROC). Amidst a laid back atmosphere, people were trickling inside and queuing to vote. There was almost no line.
DPP Headquarters was just around the corner. Already an array of orange traffic cones and roadblocks had sealed off completely the substantial city road in front of the main building. A massive open space filled with countless plastic stools, still stacked, was flanked by two large stages. On one side was a two tiered platform was prepared for members of the Taiwanese and international media who were already crowding around the premises, hours before any actual election results. I talked with a man and woman who were standing alongside the railing on the perimeter of the barricade. The man was a journalist from Japan and the woman turned out to be a volunteer for the Tsai campaign. The latter was quick to profess her deep-seated hope for a Tsai victory. On the other side was the main platform, the centerpiece of the venue where Tsai Ing-wen, her running mate William Lai and DPP heavyweights would later address their supporters. To the right of the main stage was the indoor party headquarters, where many of the party faithful and volunteers had already begun to gather.
The interior was filled with chairs facing a large screen projection with live election coverage hosted by SET News 三立新聞台, a prominent 24-hour news channel. The interior was bedecked with trendy modern decorations featuring a prominent lime green and watermelon pink color palette. Volunteers handed out water bottles and a small piece of calligraphy containing the propitious chengyu phrases 風調雨順 “wind and rain timely and ample” (a metaphor for a rich harvest) and 民富國強 “rich citizens and strong country”. Behind the volunteers was a vast poster-wall with the Tsai campaign’s slogan 台灣要贏 or “Taiwan must win” posted prominently next to a grinning Tsai and Lai on the right corner. Tsai’s slogan sans said grinning pictures was mirrored on the opposite wall, the design of which incorporated such striking additions as LED arrow-shaped lights and flat-screen television columns. In the inner corridor to the left was a screen populated with the live SNS photo uploads posted by Tsai supporters. Even further inside was a booth that was being quickly stacked up with official merchandise from the campaign. Every corner of the entire headquarters seemed to contain a reminder that “Taiwan must win” and that a Tsai Ing-wen victory was the only way to bring that future about.
And everyone inside seemed confident in the likelihood that both would happen that night. I struck up a conversation with a campaign staffer who told me in Mandarin that he believed that Tsai Ing-wen will probably emerge the victor. Obviously, the recent polls supported that stance, but the overall mood in Tsai HQ was more measured than exuberant, a pervasive feeling of cautious optimism. After receiving assurances that results would start to come in a few hours and that President Tsai herself will show up during the evening, we left for KMT Taipei headquarters in Zhongshan District.
On the way, we decided to visit the Huashan 1914 Creative Park 華山1914文化創意產業園區, one Taipei landmark that, for some reason, I had neglected to visit during my gap year. The former winery was built during the colonial period of Taiwan (Japan ruled Taiwan as a prize colony taken from Qing China after defeating the latter in the First Sino-Japanese War, signing the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki 下関条約 and subduing a subsequent independent rebel state led by Qing holdouts, the Republic of Formosa 臺灣民主國). The old colonial-style brick buildings mixed with sleek yet variegated modern creative motifs made for deeply satisfying viewing.
Various shops outfitted with magical handcrafted items added greatly to the visual experience. Especially delightful were the ubiquitous woodcraft baubles that populated the concrete corridors and indoor forest themed lanes. Everything seemed to exist within the space in impossible symbiotic harmony. Everything danced expertly around one’s eyes.
The entire mega-venue also doubles as an exposition site, and various toy related events were on full display. Taiwan remains very much the cutting edge of culture in the modern era. The copious creative output and gymnastic urban reappropriation displayed by the park seemed to be yet more proof of these undeniable credentials.
But Taipei is a thoroughly, consistently charming city, and its unapologetically modern aesthetic sensitivity is evident even outside the demarcations of its so-called culture parks. Some more viewing from our subsequent city stroll below.
In terms of handsome infrastructure, the KMT headquarters we eventually reached turned out to be no lightweight. As if in atonement for the loss of the Brobdingnagian headquarter building directly facing the Presidential Office Building the erstwhile hegemonic party forfeited in 2006, the current headquarter building also boasted an imposing scale. However, even this proud sky-blue monolith seemed muted in scale compared to the icons of Taiwan’s KMT past still firmly imprinted across the capital in the form of old party infrastructure, palace-scale memorial halls, and blue-sun iconography.
The front of Kuomintang HQ was wholly given over to a series of posters showcasing the various candidates. Han Guo-yu and Chang San-cheng 張善政, at the very top of the KMT ticket, took the central spot. This central poster was flanked by posters for the various constituency candidates for Taipei City.
In the central courtyard, a series of flashy fringed banners with punchy text were placed next to a phalanx of orange stools, while an equally orange line of barricades faced the street. Right above the main entrance, which was blocked off to everyone except party members, was a chengyu couplet with a solemn message: 革新團結 重返執政 or “innovate and unite, retake power”. The sense of political revenge, bordering on irredentism, endemic to so many opposition parties across the globe was also present here, powerfully revealing its presence through a myriad of punchy colored banners and rousing slogans.
Very few supporters had gathered during this early hour, but quite a few reporters and party officials were already scurrying about. I talked with a party official who told me that such party heavyweights as KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih 吳敦義 and former President Ma Ying-jeou were likely to show up later in the evening. Han Guo-yu’s election headquarters, as I already confirmed before election day, was in Kaohsiung, the launchpad of his political career.
After speaking with a few others, we headed north to eat lunch at the nearby Wu Hua Ma Dumpling House 五花馬水餃館. We had a plate of the restaurant’s most famous dumplings, a bowl of iconic beef noodles 牛肉麵, and a side of roasted anchovies.
After lunch, I decided that it was time to look for the People First Party candidate James Soong’s election night party. However, after spending considerable time wandering fruitlessly down Chang’an East Road where the party headquarters was supposedly located, I realized that the PFP election headquarters was probably taking place somewhere else and gave up the search.
After failing to find the PFP election headquarters, we returned to the DPP election party, where a substantial crowd now gathered to witness the announcement of the first results. The press pool had also expanded substantially. Groups of reporters started to form around the main viewing sites: right below the front stage, on the frontal side of the second stage, and to the sides of the crowded supporters. The adjacent park almost formed a sort of secondary fill space as both DPP supporters and disinterested observers began to swarm in from all directions.
Finally, at around four in the afternoon, the major networks started releasing the initial results. The weather had turned overcast by this time, but the atmosphere was far from gloomy. However, the overall feeling was not of beaming confidence either. Even Tsai’s most diehard supporters were very much aware of Han Guo-yu’s infectious dynamism and potential as a candidate. The last minute talk regarding the potential appearance of a silent Han vote (of the same ilk that propelled him to victory in the DPP stronghold of southern Taiwan) probably made some of these pan-green staffers sweat bullets in the eleventh hour of the campaign. All supporters seemed to wait in apprehensive, morbid silence.
The first results finally came in a few minutes past the hour. The first batch, from Taichung City, was a tie: two votes for Tsai versus two for Han. The sight of the tied vote, however insignificant, coupled with a Taichung dyed blue on the map, did nothing the soothe the nerves of the crowd.
However, additional results released just a few moments later turned the tide. Ironically, it was batches of votes from Kaohsiung City and County, Han’s current seat of power, that pushed Tsai in front by a starting margin of just eight votes. As far as I am aware, Tsai never lost her lead throughout the entire duration of election night.
Results only trickled in for the first few thousand votes. In several moments early in the count, it looked like Han would catch up. Soong’s third-party numbers stuck out like a sore thumb as well. It seemed for a moment that he might end up being a spoiler candidate for Han after all, as the pan-blue vote of the two candidates maintained a lead over the pan-green vote of Tsai Ing-wen. But as the raw count began to take in tens of thousands of votes, the vote gap between Tsai and Han began to solidify. After a while, even the combined pan-blue vote was could not match the numbers that Tsai was posting in the key districts coming in. In all three key swing metropolitan areas (i.e. Taichung, Kaohsuing, Taipei Metro) Tsai’s leads were holding and even expanding. Han’s totals in traditionally blue leaning regions (i.e. Nantou, the Taipei Metro, and the east coast) seemed closer to the anemic numbers posted by Eric Chu during the last presidential election in 2016 than the landslide digits the KMT boasted during the local elections in 2018, just a year and a half ago. If the two models for projected KMT performance in this election cycle had been the last local elections versus the last presidential election, the juggernaut pendulum shift towards Tsai was quickly validating the latter.
We headed back to our Airbnb room after the results calcified into a clear Tsai advantage. On the way, we stopped by the Hope Market again to purchase some local organic products, including soy bean milk and raw taro, and some Chinese traditional medicinal products. We also visited the Daiso Nanxi location to stock up on supplies.
Back in the Airbnb, my mother and I unpacked a mound of snacks and cooked the organic taro from Hope Market, the texture of which was halfway between starchy and creamy. On one wall of our Airbnb, a television continued to update us with live results. By this time in the evening, it was almost certain that Tsai was going to win. There had been some back and forth but Han’s percentage of the vote continued to nip at forty percent, while Tsai’s consistently surpassed fifty percent of the total vote. James Soong, a third party candidate as mentioned above, had hoped during the campaign to position himself as the main pan-blue alternative to the sharp-tongued Han (Soong had his share of controversy, however, regarding his past involvement with the GIO or Government Information Office during Taiwan’s authoritarian phase of governance). Soong, who had previously promised that this would be his last run, fell way short of his double-digit totals he received in 2016. The once formidable pan-blue vote did not even crack the forty-five percent mark. Soon, the newsreels revealed that vice presidential candidate Chang had arrived at the Kaohsiung HQ and that Han himself was following closely behind him. For a remarkable period of time, the television fixated on a group of reporters packing around a sole elevator, all seeking to catch a glimpse of either Chang or Mayor Han. At this point, a victory declaration seemed imminent. Everyone seemed to just be waiting for the inevitable Tsai Ing-wen victory appearance and speech to occur just blocks away.
The DPP won resounding victories in the down ballot races as well. The Taipei City districts behaved much like the way they did in 2016. Granted, the KMT’s vote totals were much healthier than they had been back then, but they were not distributed in the right places for the party to make proper gains. Interestingly, the KMT did win the district that contained my Airbnb, with Chiang Kai-shek’s great-grandson winning a second term in the Legislative Yuan. But even that seat race was a net hold, not a flip to the Kuomintang.
We finally decided to make to final trip to Tsai HQ. As night fell in Taipei, the crowds grew massive at Tsai’s victory party. The energy was buoyant, and the crowds were highly volatile, reacting explosively to changes in the vote totals. Now the central motive for keeping track of the numbers for most DPP supporters was no longer the two person horse race between Tsai and Han, but the unprecedented raw vote total that their beloved “xiaoying” 小英 was amassing. In particular, the focus of the crowd soon shifted to whether or not President Tsai would crack the eight million vote threshold, a feat with literally no precedent in Taiwan’s political history.
Tsai soon reached that threshold to the eardrum shattering roar of the crowd. The campaign apparently had their own raw count animation that erupted in virtual fireworks as soon as the president reached the number eight million. Supporters ferociously waved banners and giant flags, while the emcee seemed hellbent on testing the limits of the sound system on site with some earth-shattering vocals. In Kaohsiung, tears poured profusely down the faces of despondent Han Guo-yu supporters. The misery of the Han supporters, captured in real time by the hungry camera lenses of reporters down in Kaohsiung, seemed to wax with every successive news update. Elections in Taiwan are known to be raucous occasions, historically featuring everything from jubilant celebrations, large-scale riots, and even assassination attempts. Perhaps this could be considered a fait accompli in a nation where the ramifications of its own politics are so wide-reaching.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the Tsai/Lai ticket took to the stage to the hearty approval of the crowd. Silence soon followed as they gave her their full attention. All of Taiwan, blue and green, was listening. Both sides of the strait were listening. The whole world was listening.
Perhaps sensing the gravity of the moment and the importance of her words in this speech, Tsai choose to give a gracious yet pointed speech. She deliberately choose to refer to the national polity as both the Republic of China (R.O.C.) and Taiwan in the beginning portion of her speech. The use of the term R.O.C. probably served as a nod to the millions of pan-blue supporters who voted for a cause that, for the most part, considers China to be one country under the legitimate rule of the Republic of China government and constitution. But, as the head of a party that mostly affirms the de-facto present reality of two countries across the Taiwan strait, she also stressed the term Taiwan, using it far more frequently in her victory speech.
The first portion of the speech was more diplomatic in tone. Tsai made a series of obligatory remarks thanking her supporters, her rivals, and the members of the press now arrayed like a legion in front of her. These remarks were followed by broad statements regarding general domestic policy directions (e.g. closing the income gap, internationalizing education, investing in infrastructure). Tsai also invoked national security, perhaps a nod to the administration’s controversial efforts to push for anti “disinformation and infiltration” measures (highlighted most prominently with the DPP’s passing of the Anti-infiltration Act 反滲透法, which became a massive topic during the campaign). Not willing to waste any iota of political momentum from the occasion, Tsai was quick to interpret her victory as proof of public support for the domestic policies of her administration and of her party in the Legislative Yuan. The crowd remained relatively muted for most of this portion of the speech.
The crowd reactions became more interesting as Tsai shifted gears towards addressing at last the international ramifications of her victory. First, she noted the unprecedented nature of this round of R.O.C. elections, which received substantial attention from members of the international press. The crowd reacted with cheers when Tsai mentioned that Taiwan was an “indispensable member of the international community” and that “all countries should consider Taiwan a partner, not an issue”, an obvious reference to the series of diplomatic setbacks the mostly unrecognized polity had to endure in the face of the PROC’s assiduous efforts to isolate Taiwan diplomatically, which had previously led to the loss of Taiwan’s key diplomatic interlocutors in Latin America. When Tsai stated that when Taiwan’s “sovereignty and democracy are threatened with loud threats” the Taiwanese people “will shout our determination even more loudly back”, the crowd erupted in wild applause.
The climax of the speech was undoubtedly when Tsai elucidated the eight characters that she said should be the prerequisite for future positive interactions across the Taiwan Strait: 和平 對等 民主 對話 (peace, equal status, democracy, dialogue). She stated unequivocally that “peace” means that the 對岸 “opposite shore” (referring to China) had to abandon its threats of military force against Taiwan. “Equal status”, she went on, means that both sides should not deny the fact of the other’s existence, a statement that seemed to cut directly into the both the CCP and KMT’s most hard-line stances regarding the definition of China. “Democracy” means the right of twenty-three million Taiwanese citizens to enjoy popular sovereignty in the island. Lastly, she explained that “dialogue” means that both parties had to sit down to discuss the future of cross-strait relations using bilateral diplomacy. Tsai’s eloquent summary of these key points were greeted with some of the loudest cheers of the entire night.
The speech ended soon afterwards. History had truly been made. Exhausted, we left the venue in favor of some nighttime snacking in the landmark Linjiang Street Tourist Night Market 臨江街觀光夜市 in Taiwan’s Da’an District 大安區 before calling it a day. See pictures from the delicious occasion below.
The Post-Campaign Outlook: What Happened
After delivering her election night victory speech, President Tsai took questions from the massive press pool huddled at the foot of the stage. The first question came from a reporter from the BBC, a broadcaster that provided extensive coverage of events in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan with a highly critical stance towards the CCP. The voice was instantly recognizable as that of John Sudworth, BBC’s Beijing Correspondent. His question, whether Tsai had Xi Jin-ping to thank for her victory, elicited knowing laughter and applause from the crowd.
To a certain extant, the answer to that question is unequivocally “yes”. Tsai had been significantly underwater in the polls immediately after her resignation as party leader after the DPP’s crushing local election defeats at the end of 2018. Taiwanese political talk shows at the time continually referenced the millions of votes that the DPP lost in the space of just two years of administrative dominance by Tsai Ing-wen.
The first rumblings of a comeback, however, were in direct response to events in China. Perhaps feeling empowered by the overwhelming KMT victory in Taiwan or perhaps in response to the increasingly blatant US support of Tsai vis-à-vis China, Xi Jin-ping made a rhetorical gamble, attempting to use the shift in Taiwanese politics, which had mostly been driven by domestic issues, as political capital for building momentum around the PROC’s preferred agenda for cross-strait relations. In a televised New Year’s address, broadcasted the day after New Year’s Day 2019, Xi explicitly elucidated a roadmap for unification as the best solution to the Taiwan issue, saying that the CCP wanted to achieve “a future of peaceful unification” through good faith and assiduous efforts. However, he did not rule out military force, saying that such force could be directed at bad-faith foreign actors pushing for a divided China or at a “small minority” of Taiwan independence activists. He bet big-league on the assumption that the vast majority of Taiwan compatriots 同胞 acknowledged the principle of a single, undivided China. Despite public polls in Taiwan that currently suggest a strong shift towards identifying as Taiwanese rather than Chinese or both, Xi also broached the topic of national identity, saying pointedly that “Chinese do not attack fellow Chinese”.
In the world of Taiwanese punditry, Xi’s speech made a big splash, being covered extensively for days, even weeks, after the actual event. For obvious reasons, the timing was extremely negative for the Kuomintang. Combined with extensive western media coverage of the Uighur prison camps (built by the CCP ostensibly for anti-terrorist motives following such racially charged incidents as the 7·5 Riots in Ürümqi and the infiltration of outside terrorist groups into the province), the speech painted an ominous picture of China’s aggressive regional assimilation and repressive social control policies. But Han’s lead seemed to still hold, despite these weeks of negative feedback.
What really eliminated Han’s remaining lead was the jaw-dropping events of the summer, beginning with the Hong Kong protests against the 2019 Hong Kong Extradition Bill, commonly known by the greatly abbreviated name 逃犯條例 (lit. fugitive ordinance). What struck me throughout the universally known saga was the ferocity of the fighting between protesters and authorities and between pro-democracy and pro-Beijing parties. Of course, Korea is known for its explosive, highly physical protest culture. But the longevity of the conflict in an SAR (Special Autonomous Region) smaller than the population of the immediate city of Seoul (and less than a third the population of the Seoul Metropolitan Area) was truly noteworthy.
Of course, the moment was tailor made for the DPP narrative regarding China. For the first time in months, the message from Taiwan punditry was that it was the KMT that was officially on the defensive. Han’s once double-digit lead vanished and was replaced by a solid lead for Tsai. Despite his populist strengths, Han Guo-yu was also dogged by a crisis of trust. He had been elected on a mandate to restore Kaohsiung’s former glory. Leaving Kaohsiung to campaign for another office only months after being elected as mayor greatly crippled his credibility (culminating in the later post-election efforts to impeach him as mayor of Kaohsiung).
Yet, Han Guo-yu defeated Terry Gou 郭台銘 relatively easily in the KMT primary. His populist appeal and ironclad 韓粉support base granted him the top spot in his party. That base alone, however, was ultimately not enough to get him elected. Granted, there was still glowing coverage of Han in the more blue friendly strongholds of the media, but the damage sustained throughout the summer had already created a narrative of a crisis of Taiwan sovereignty that he simply could not compete with. Of course, other campaign developments (e.g. William Lai’s DPP primary challenge, Chang Shan-cheng’s entry as Han VP pick, anti-infiltration bills, erratic debate performances) were all factors in the campaign. But, in my mind, it is clear that the existential question of the potential infringement of Taiwan’s national sovereignty was the decisive factor that shaped and molded public opinion throughout this election.
In terms of the actual results, Han Guo-yu completely failed to reassemble the coalition that had catapulted the KMT to victory in 2018. KMT performance in the south had always been soft, but Ma Ying-jeou was able to achieve virtual electoral parity in Kaohsiung in his winning coalitions. Han, perhaps fatally encumbered by his abandonment of mayoral duties during the campaign, was decisively defeated in Kaohsiung. The traditionally KMT north, including the Taipei Metropolitan Area, more narrowly went to Tsai as well. Han did make some surprise gains in Keelung, but even there was not able to win an outright victory.
Han’s best areas were in solid blue strongholds (e.g. east and central Taiwan, rural Miaoli, and Hsinchu). In these places, it was not uncommon for Han to achieve double digit swings (strengthening the notion that Han only was able to bring out the party’s solid base and failed to expand the KMT coalition). In a politically deeply divided country, such regional divides portend ominously (although Han did manage to make superficial gains across Taiwan). Overall, Han did not get blown out across the island like Eric Chu did in 2016. As Tsai Ing-wen herself took care to emphasize in a BBC interview after the election, it was not a landslide.
However the nearly nineteen point victory was an exceptionally strong showing for Tsai. In terms of the percentage of the vote received, Tsai’s final percentage was actually a tad higher than her share in 2016 (despite the tightening of the percentage margin between the KMT candidate and Tsai). Perhaps adding to the symbolism of the whole event, the final margin was noticeably conterminous in scale with the twenty-point victory the pro-democracy faction in Hong Kong was able to achieve in the 2019 SAR local elections. This victory was achieved despite all of the opposing factors that, in a regular election cycle, would have precluded such electoral dominance. Pro-democracy factions in Hong Kong had come to expect popular majority dominance in SAR elections. The DPP, on the other hand, was a vulnerable party that had been decisively defeated just a year and a half earlier. Initially, Tsai looked vulnerable not just to Han Guo-yu but also to William Lai in the DPP primary. Among my Chinese and Taiwanese acquaintances in Berkeley, the dominant opinion just last spring was that she would not even make it through the primary.
But all that changed with the activation of a sentiment embedded deep inside the majority of the young on this peculiar island. As my Taiwanese friends and acquaintances expressed in a truly heartfelt manner, politics was but one mechanism, albeit a crucial one, to safeguard something of existential importance, the shared Taiwanese experience (if not a shared Taiwanese identity). That this sentiment was powerful enough to resurrect a nearly-dead political career in an overwhelming fashion that defied the usual conventional and mathematical rules of politics on the island will undoubtedly have serious ramifications for China, Taiwan, and the two sides’ conceptualization of the cross-strait experience for the foreseeable future.
As for me, it was an honor to enjoy the luxury of a front-row seat to history in the making in Taipei 2020.
