In the final days of an election campaign that has been framed as a choice between “war and peace” or “democracy and autocracy”, a nationwide air raid warning over a satellite launch from China could well have caused panic.
Instead, the piercingly loud bilingual presidential alert prompted confusion, mistranslating the Chinese word for satellite into “missile” in English, and anger, as opposition politicians quickly accused the government of fear mongering days before an election that will have far-reaching implications beyond Taiwan.
On Saturday, the island nation of 24 million people heads into its most closely watched, and closely contested, presidential election since the Asian democracy’s first in 1996. Polls will open at 8am, closing eight hours later, with a result expected in the evening. About 19.5 million people are eligible to vote, and in 2020 almost 75% of them did.
Politically, Taiwan is deeply polarised, but it proudly and chaotically embraces the process of its relatively new democracy. Election season is a jumble of boisterous campaign events, juvenile sniping, fake news and political scandals that often overshadow the serious and complex policy debates about Taiwan’s evolving identity, its place in a world that doesn’t recognise it, and the existential threat of China.
President Tsai Ing-wen is stepping down because of term limits, but her vice-president, Lai Ching-te, is standing as the continuity candidate. Tsai and Lai come from the Democratic Progressive party (DPP), an outfit detested by Beijing, which views them as separatists. China views Taiwan as a province and has long vowed to “re-unify” it with China. It has not ruled out the use of force to achieve that aim, a prospect that threatens to bring the region, and possibly the world, into conflict.
Facing Lai is charismatic former police chief, Hou You-yi, from the more conservative Kuomintang (KMT), which advocates for closer economic ties with China. Both parties oppose Chinese annexation, but Hou bills himself as the candidate who will be able to engage in the dialogue with Beijing that Lai is “incapable” of.
Rockstar welcomes
While China looms large over the election, domestic issues are important, too. The number one concern for voters is the economy, according to surveys. That reflects the fact that real wages have grown by an average of just 1% over the past decade. Affordable housing remains out of reach for many young people. The opposition parties blame the DPP for economic mismanagement, holding the party responsible for egg shortages and power blackouts that have hit the island in recent years.
There are deep ideological differences between the major parties. The KMT opposition previously ruled Taiwan under an authoritarian dictatorship for decades after fleeing the Chinese civil war and establishing the Republic of China government in exile. It identifies Taiwan as culturally and ethnically linked with China. The ruling DPP, born out of the anti-authoritarian movement, supports Taiwan sovereignty and promotes a Taiwanese identity that is separate from China.
A few months ago it seemed almost a given that the DPP would retain the presidency, but now observers aren’t so certain.
The race began with a public and farcical collapse of the opposition parties’ attempts to form a coalition. Several news cycles were spent on the KMT vice-presidential candidate claiming in a debate that he had personally invited Taylor Swift to Taiwan but she refused because of the geopolitical situation and this was the DPP’s fault. This week three elderly KMT fans were hospitalised after mistaking KMT-branded giveaway laundry pods for lollies. On Wednesday the husband of a candidate was live-streamed flipping off a constituent who shouted an insult at the campaign car the couple was touring in.
The candidates have spent weeks travelling around Taiwan, holding campaign events for hundreds of thousands of people in temples, schools and town squares. The leaders and other dignitaries are welcomed like rockstars.
The rallies are raucous. On the sidelines of a DPP event, unofficial vendors sell badges and keyrings declaring: “Heaven will destroy the CCP [Chinese Communist party],”, and “Taiwan independence”. In Chiayi, at a KMT rally, a woman in a sparkling pink curly wig and bedazzled sunglasses shouts joyfully into a TV camera. Onstage a group of young men perform a hip-hop dance about DPP corruption. Speakers deliver a laundry list of alleged DPP criminality and conspiracy theories. One supporter claims that Tsai “only eats British food” while Hou is a man of the people who enjoys Taiwanese fare.
The KMT’s attempt to rebrand itself as the party of regular people rings hollow to many older voters. At a DPP rally in Keelung, a port city, an 83-year-old retired sailor named Mr Song tells the Guardian that he remembers seeing bodies floating in the harbour after the KMT violently suppressed an anti-government uprising in 1947. “It’s not easy for us to get where we are today,” Song says. “We have a good life, we have freedom.”
But people like Song are gradually being replaced by voters whose view of Taiwanese politics is focused on the present rather than the past.
‘Young people are drawn to revolution’
Freddy Lim wants to make Taiwan cool again. Sitting in his legislative office, the outgoing legislator and frontman for metal band Chthonic says the DPP is struggling to keep its younger voters, who now see it as the establishment.
“Young people are drawn to revolution, to being against the system,” says Lim, who was an independent legislator but recently joined the DPP. Lim says the party needs to rebrand and remind young people of its progressive achievements.
“There have been reforms that people will talk about for decades,” he says of the DPP era’s legalisation of same-sex marriage, transitional justice efforts, and other social reforms.
“Taiwan in Asia is a revolutionary country. It’s very rebellious,” he says.
“I think there’s a way that in Taiwan we can still make young people feel that we’re on the way, that we’re rebels, that we’re very cool.”
‘We are all afraid that Taiwan will become the next Hong Kong’
An unlikely magnet for the cool vote is the 64-year-old Ko Wen-je. Ko is the founder of the newcomer Taiwan People’s party, which he launched in 2019. Ko, a gaffe-prone former surgeon, is not cool in the traditional sense of the word. But he bills himself as a technocrat who can offer a “third way”, as well as fix issues such as wage growth and housing. It is a pitch that has particularly resonated with younger people, who seem unbothered by his lack of a clear stance on China.
“What Professor Ko says in public is more scientific and logical, and that convinced me,” says Augustine, a 21-one-year-old computer science student, who is using his first vote to cast a ballot for Ko.
The unusual 2024 race has upended traditional expectations of Taiwanese voters, and candidates like Ko are pushing to flip long-held seats. In Jianshi, a KMT-loyal township in Taiwan’s mountainous north, 60-year-old Mrs Lin senses a change in the air. Lin lived in China for 20 years, but now she lives in a treehouse by the side of a mountain road, running a cafe and grocer for locals. She says there are fears the KMT will “sell out Taiwan” to China. “In our daily conversations … we are all afraid that Taiwan will become the next Hong Kong.”
Further down the mountain in Miaoli, a young legislator is also banking on the winds of change. Tseng Wen-hsueh’s campaign is up against history. In 73 years the county has never voted against the KMT, earning itself the nickname “Miaoli nation” for its party loyalty.
Tseng, who is running as an independent, has given dozens of speeches. “The ideals that we have in our hearts for our country and society cannot be achieved by just fighting on the outside or through opposition,” he says. “We have to take up those positions.”
The potential makeup of the legislature is being closely watched by observers. There is a solid chance the DPP could win the presidency but lose its majority in the 113-seat chamber, introducing the possibility of political gridlock. At a DPP rally in Keelung, Lai compared the government to a car, with the president and vice-president as the drivers, and parliament as the engine. The DPP needs to control the engine to be powerful enough to promote national progress, he told supporters.
How will Beijing react?
Looming over all of this, and of primary interest to the rest of the world, is China. Beijing has weaponised military drills, economic coercion, cognitive warfare and diplomatic isolation to pressure Taiwan and its people to roll over without a fight and accept annexation. On Thursday, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said it hoped the majority of Taiwanese recognised the “extreme danger” of Lai in potentially triggering a cross-strait confrontation.
The topic of China is both of deep concern for people in Taiwan and one that many are sick of talking about. In the years since the last election, China’s threats have grown more serious. Thousands of Taiwanese have signed up to civil defence groups, tech tycoons are funding local militia training, and there are signs of investors and dual citizens developing contingency plans.
If the KMT win on Saturday, Hou will have to balance his pledge to be friendlier to China with the will of a people who are far more suspicious of it than when the KMT last governed. Should the DPP win, a hostile reaction from China is all but guaranteed, the only question is what form it will take.
Some voters, like 50-year-old Ms He, agree with Hou’s characterisation of the election as “a choice between war and peace”. Others, like 57-year-old DPP supporter Mr Tsai, believe the KMT will send Taiwan down the same path as Hong Kong.
“The future of Taiwan is at stake in this election,” he says.
