Beijing, Taipei must pursue mature bilateral ties

Tsai’s landslide win in last Saturday’s election makes her Taiwan’s first female president when she formally takes office in May.
Her victory comes on the heels of a rapid rapprochement between
Taipei and Beijing under eight years of rule by the outgoing President Ma Ying-Jeou of the Kuomintang (KMT). Tsai’s victory and her DPP’s sweep of a majority in the Legislative Yuan, the first since the legislature’s seats were opened for direct
elections in 1992, may signal Taiwanese voters’ repudiation of Ma’s China-friendly policies.
That should not lead Tsai and the DPP to return to the hardline stance toward China taken by the previous DPP government under Chen Shui-bian from 2000 to 2008. After the election win, Tsai said she would try to “maintain the status quo for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait” to bring the greatest benefits and well-being to the Taiwanese people, while also warning Beijing that “any forms of suppression will harm the stability of cross-strait relations”.
China is wary of the DPP as a party that seeks independence for Taiwan. Upon Tsai’s victory in the presidential race, the Chinese government issued a statement saying that it will “resolutely oppose any form of ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist activities”.
After taking back government reign from the DPP eight years ago, Ma actively promoted closer economic ties with China. But the deepening cross-strait economic integration sparked concern among Taiwanese people that the island’s autonomy was being undermined.
Today, China is the largest destination for Taiwan’s exports, accounting for roughly 40 per cent of the total. About 1 million employees of Taiwanese businesses and their relatives are estimated to stay in mainland China. The number of Chinese tourists to Taiwan has expanded 12 times since Ma lifted the ban in 2008 to hit nearly 4 million in 2014. But popular resentment is said to be strong that the expansion of Taiwanese firms’ activities in China has led to the hollowing out of the island’s industries and jobs, and that the deeper cross-strait business relations have not benefited Taiwanese people at large while turning the island increasingly dependent on the mainland.
The historic meeting last November between Ma and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore – the first between top leaders of China and Taiwan since the Nationalists fled to the island and the Communist Party took power after the civil war in 1949 – may have been intended to demonstrate the cosy ties between Beijing and Taipei. But the results of Saturday’s polls suggest that the Taiwanese voters were not swayed.
Tsai won about 56 percent of the votes in Saturday’s election, far more than the 31 per cent gained by Eric Chu, the KMT candidate. The DPP, which had never won more than 40 per cent of the parliament seats in the past, captured 68 of the 113 seats at stake, while the KMT took only 35 seats.
Despite the election wins, Tsai will face tough challenges, including keeping relations with China from being strained while responding to the popular discontent as demonstrated in the polls.
For its part, China, which in 1996 threatened Taiwan’s first democratic election of its president with missile exercises, should take the outcome of the election as a cue that political and military pressures or economic interests would not sway popular sentiment in Taiwan. Beijing needs to keep up its dialogue with Taiwan and seek to build a new, mutually acceptable foundation for cross-strait relations.
Stable and favourable ties between China and Taiwan matter a lot for security in Asia. Japan, along with other countries in the region, should take steps that will be conducive to promoting cross-strait
dialogue.