Taiwan's midterm elections are about more than geopolitics

8 November 2022

Taiwan’s midterm elections, which are taking place on 26 November 2022, will occur in an increasingly fraught geopolitical context. The electorate will vote for city and county councillors, as well as mayors. The elections, however, are about more than just geopolitics.

These elections will occur mere months after US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s historic visit to Taiwan, the highest-ranking American diplomatic official to visit Taiwan in a quarter of a century. In the immediate aftermath of the Pelosi visit, China conducted unprecedented live-fire drills around Taiwan. Even though the reaction in Taiwan — which has lived under the Chinese threat for decades — was rather muted, international news media reported on the subject as if war was imminent.

Therefore, while it will not be surprising if international observers view the elections through the frame of cross-strait politics (unlike in presidential and legislative elections), domestic political dynamics will be more salient in shaping the outcome of these local midterm elections.

The geopolitical backdrop of the elections

Chinese President Xi Jinping opened the 20th National Congress with remarks that the use of force was still on the table for achieving unification. Following his speech, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chief of US Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday warned that China may have moved up its timeline for unification and could attack in the next few years. However, although international observers have suggested an escalation of rhetoric about Taiwan, Xi’s speech was rather boilerplate and made no new statements.

Local midterm elections are more often about domestic issues than international, cross-strait ones, and it would be misleading to view Taiwanese politics solely through the frame of cross-strait issues.

In response, officials in Taipei have vowed that there would be no compromise on Taiwan’s democracy in the face of Chinese threats and have touted measures aimed at strengthening Taiwan’s military readiness in the event of a Chinese invasion. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen did not directly respond to Xi’s comments at the 20th National Congress. She has sought to ensure that her administration is not perceived as the provocateur in cross-strait relations — unlike her predecessor Chen Shui-bian from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Indeed, her comments during this year’s National Day celebrations in October struck a conciliatory tone, stating: “Provided there is rationality, equality, and mutual respect, we are willing to work with the Beijing authorities to find a mutually agreeable arrangement for upholding peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”. However, it is to be expected that the Chinese government will try to frame Tsai as a radical whose unreasonable and unilateral actions have caused a deterioration in cross-strait relations.

An internally divided opposition

Even if cross-strait issues will not be the main determining issue in this election, the domestic opposition in Taiwan, the Kuomintang (KMT), is likely to take the familiar tack of framing Tsai as a cross-strait provocateur. This can be observed in the KMT’s criticisms of Tsai’s National Day comments, framing Tsai as seeking to erode the institutions of the Republic of China — which it claims are the fundamental bedrocks of cross-strait peace.

The KMT has historically claimed the right to hold political power in Taiwan because of its open channels of communication with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which it claims can help maintain stable cross-strait relations. According to the KMT, the DPP is a radical pro-independence party which is too dead-set on pursuing its ideological pro-independence agenda and therefore unable to communicate with China. However, time-worn shibboleths such as the 1992 Consensus may no longer hold water, with successive reform-minded KMT leaders (including the current chairman Eric Chu) proposing to drop the Consensus before rapidly backpedalling from the idea in the face of opposition from other party heavyweights.

Chu is currently maintaining a delicate balancing act in terms of cross-strait relations. On the one hand, he has touted a pivot towards America, to reverse perceptions of the KMT as a pro-China party and to win back voters who have punished it for its image in previous elections. As part of this image makeover, despite the KMT’s long-held negative image of Japan (given the lingering legacies of the Sino-Japanese War), Chu was willing to take the political risk of openly mourning the assassinated former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Even so, after Pelosi’s visit, KMT Vice Chair Andrew Hsia still visited China to meet with Chinese government officials — a move that younger members of the party criticised, urging Hsia to drop the idea. The KMT also came under fire for offering congratulations to the CCP regarding the 20th National Congress, with the view that this compromised Taiwan’s sovereignty by congratulating a hostile power.

Past years have seen a significant backlash against the KMT for its pro-China stance, particularly among Taiwanese youth — the KMT under 40 in 2020. Even as Chu has sought to turn the image of the party around through his pivot towards the US, the Hsia visit may indicate that the party is internally divided at present, with some elements of the party against changing the party’s pro-China image for the purpose of winning over voters.

Domestic political issues in focus

Indeed, even during Pelosi’s visit and the live-fire drills that followed, domestic media was more focused on a scandal involving plagiarism allegations against the DPP’s Taoyuan mayoral candidate, Lin Chih-chien, and other stories involving celebrity gossip. Rather than cross-strait relations, Taiwanese voters are more concerned with domestic issues such as economic growth and the Tsai administration’s performance in the fight against COVID-19, as is usually the case for midterm elections.

As the DPP’s Taipei mayoral candidate is the former Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung — who previously led Taiwan’s pandemic control efforts — the KMT has attacked Chen and the DPP’s record. The KMT’s candidate is legislator Chiang Wan-an, the purported great-grandson of Chiang Kai-shek, though pan-Blue votes (those supportive of historically pro-unification parties in Taiwan, of which the KMT is the largest party) may be split. This is because a third party, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), is fielding Taipei’s Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang. Although still a pan-Blue party, the TPP is generally perceived as less ideologically hard-line than the KMT.

The KMT’s criticism of Taiwan's economic performance during the Tsai administration's tenure largely dovetails with its attacks on the administration's performance in the fight against COVID-19. The party has argued that the Tsai administration did not do enough to stimulate the economy during the pandemic.

Taiwan’s provision that a national referendum can be held in conjunction with elections sometimes foregrounds domestic political issues. However, the only issue being voted on this year is whether to lower the voting age to 18 from the current voting age of 20. This issue ostensibly has bipartisan support — though the KMT has seemed less willing to embrace the proposal given the party’s declining popularity among the youth.

More than just independence versus unification

Taiwan’s political dynamic has long been characterised by a primary cleavage between independence and unification. Nevertheless, midterm elections are often more about local political issues than Taiwan’s existential threat from China. The independence versus unification framing will likely become more important when Tsai Ing-wen steps down in 2024, following the end of her second term and the election of Taiwan’s next president.

So far, the overall outcome of the elections remains unclear. Even with the KMT in relatively dire straits due to internal division and challenges from other pan-Blue parties, it has historically maintained a stronger hold on local politics. Therefore, it will not be surprising if the KMT does better than expected. Yet, this would not indicate a turnaround by the Taiwanese public in terms of suddenly switching positions to support the KMT’s cross-strait policy either. Local midterm elections are more often about domestic issues than international, cross-strait ones, and it would be misleading to view Taiwanese politics solely through the frame of cross-strait issues.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Brian Hioe is one of the founding editors of New Bloom Magazine, an online magazine covering activism and youth politics in Taiwan and the Asia Pacific. He is a freelance journalist and translator. Image credit: Flickr/Olli Thomson.