By Shannon Tiezzi
So far Beijing’s response to the DPP victory has been mild, but cross-strait relations will never be quite the same.
On January 16, as polls had predicted, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) handily won the presidency back from the Kuomintang (KMT), with DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen winning 56 percent of the vote. The DPP also won its first-ever majority in Taiwan’s legislature, picking up 68 out of 113 seats. Those results usher in a new political era in Taiwan; never before has the DPP scored such a huge electoral victory in national polls.
Now that Taiwan has voted, Beijing also has a choice to make: how it will respond to the definitive ouster of the KMT, its preferred partner for cross-strait relations. Ever since Chen Shui-bian, the last DPP president, was in office from 2000 to 2008, Beijing has equated DPP with ‘Taiwan independence’ and ‘splittism.’ How will Beijing interact with a Taiwan that is solidly ruled by the DPP?
The official response from the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office, the government body responsible for cross-strait relations in Beijing, began by noting the strides made over the past eight years (since President Ma Ying-jeou came to power). The statement emphasized that the framework for cross-strait cooperation was built on the “political foundation of holding fast to the ’1992 Consensus’ and opposing ‘Taiwan independence.’” The current “favorable situation” in cross-strait relations did not come easily, the TAO noted, and must be “cherished.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat