The Changing Tides of Taiwanese Politics

With just weeks to go before Election Day, Taiwan’s voters are on the verge of handing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) a landslide victory. The DPP’s presidential candidate, Tsai Ing-wen, is leading in the polls by double digits, and her party is within range of becoming the majority party in Taiwan’s legislature. Such an outcome would make the DPP Taiwan’s true ruling party for the first time in history (its first successful presidential candidate, Chen Shui-bian, governed from 2000 to 2008 without a supportive legislature).

For most of the past 70 years, Taiwan has been ruled by the Kuomintang (KMT), the party led by Chiang Kai-shek and, in the democratic era, presidents Lee Teng-hui and Ma Ying-jeou. Giving the DPP the opportunity to form a government is a profound change of direction for Taiwan’s voters, so it’s worth considering the question: Why?

The simplest answer is that it is normal for parties in a two-party system to alternate leadership, and there is more than a little truth to that response, but an unprecedented shift to an all-DPP government merits a deeper explanation.

The Woes of the KMT

Central to the DPP’s strong performance is widespread dissatisfaction with the incumbent president, the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou. Ma was elected easily in 2008, and he defeated Tsai in 2012 to win a second term. Although he had enough support to win reelection, Taiwan’s people gave him no honeymoon in his second term. Opinion turned against him early on, and he was never able to recover the support he had once enjoyed.

Part of the reason for Ma’s fading popularity had to do with his leadership style. Many Taiwanese found him detached and distant. In 2009, landslides and flooding caused by typhoon Morakot killed more than 500 islanders. Ma’s response to the disaster struck many as sluggish, and his meetings with victims of the storm lacked the human touch that Taiwanese value in their political leaders. A photo of Ma gesturing to victims to be quiet got wide circulation, for example, reinforcing the image of the president as aloof and unfeeling.

Ma suffered, too, because while the KMT enjoyed a legislative majority throughout his presidency, his relations with the legislature were difficult, and many of his legislative initiatives fell short. Part of the problem was an ongoing feud with legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng. Wang, who ruled the legislative body with an iron fist, insisted on extensive cross-party consultations before moving legislation forward. That slowed the legislative process and contributed to the defeat of a number of Ma’s bills.

In 2013 the KMT attempted to remove Wang from office by accusing him of influence peddling. The accusation provided grounds for expelling Wang from the party, which would have forced his removal from the speaker’s chair. Wang fought his expulsion and got a court order allowing him to retain his seat. With the party in danger of splitting, Ma (in his role as KMT party chair) dropped the appeal against Wang.

The Ma-Wang dispute revealed deep rifts within the party, and those rifts came back to hurt the KMT in the run-up to the presidential election. Most observers expected the KMT to nominate Eric Chu (Chu Li-luan) for the top office, but when the time came, Chu did not put himself forward as a candidate. With the deadline looming, and none of the KMT’s real heavyweights registered for the primary, a female legislator named Hung Hsiu-chu threw her hat into the ring, apparently with the goal of goading others to join the race.

As it turned out, no other would-be candidates came forward, and Hung became the KMT nominee. Although she had served several terms in the legislature, including as deputy speaker, Hung was a poor choice for the presidency. She had little experience campaigning for office (she had been elected as a party-list representative, which did not require winning in a district of her own) and her views were distant from those of her own party’s mainstream, much less the electorate at large.

With a weak candidate selected through a flawed process at the top of the ticket, several KMT legislative hopefuls dropped out of the race or decided to run without the KMT label. In August, James Soong (Soong Chu-yu), a former KMT politician and past candidate for president and vice president, joined the race. Hung’s weakness combined with Soong’s strong background left conservative voters with a difficult choice: Which of the candidates would have a better chance against Tsai?

To rescue the KMT’s reputation, shore up the legislative races, and prevent a split in the conservative vote, the KMT held a special session in October to reconsider its nomination. Hung was removed from the ticket, and Eric Chu, the party chair who had declined to offer himself for the nomination in July, agreed to be the KMT’s presidential candidate.

The Rise of the DPP

The chaos in the KMT is a big factor helping to explain Tsai’s commanding lead in the presidential race. But it is not the only factor. While the DPP’s strong lead certainly reflects voters’ desire for change, it’s not accurate to characterize the race as simply “voting against the KMT.” On the contrary, real support for the DPP has broadened over the past four years.

The KMT got a preview of 2015’s crisis in November 2014 when the DPP swept local elections. For almost two decades after its founding, the KMT could count on about 50 percent of the vote in most elections, while the Democratic Progressives rarely broke the 45 percent barrier. In 2014, however, the DPP and allied candidates won 55 percent of the votes cast in the mayoral elections. The DPP picked up seven mayorships (for a total of 13), while the KMT lost nine (dropping its total to six). The DPP also increased its share of several other local offices, although the KMT retained its traditional advantage in grassroots races. The result opened the very real possibility the DPP could win a majority of the vote in the 2016 elections.

The DPP is also enjoying stronger voter support outside the polls. For many years, the KMT was more popular than the DPP. During DPP President Chen Shui-bian’s first term (2000-2004) DPP identifiers outnumbered KMT identifiers, but the KMT regained its lead after 2004. Since 2012, however, the percentage of voters who identify with the KMT has plummeted by 40 percent, while support for the DPP has turned upward, leaving the Democratic Progressives with nearly a 10 percentage point advantage. Nathan Batto, a leading observer of Taiwan’s electoral trends, says this shift shows that the old norm of the KMT beating the DPP by 5 percentage points is out of date.

The most recent presidential polls have the DPP leading by a wide margin. A recent survey from Taiwan Indicators Survey Research (TISR) found 46 percent of voters in support of Tsai, compared to 16 percent for Chu and 9 percent for Soong. These results have most observers convinced Tsai’s position is unassailable.

In short, the political trends of the past few years – both in voting and in party identification – overwhelmingly favor the Democratic Progressives. The likely result is that the DPP will win both the executive and the legislative elections on January 16.

The DPP’s rising popularity benefits from three interrelated trends: flagging economic confidence, declining support for the KMT’s approach to cross-strait relations, and rising activism in Taiwan’s civil society.

After decades of extraordinary growth, Taiwan’s economic prospects have darkened in recent years. From 1987, when Taiwanese were first permitted to travel to the mainland, until the economic crisis of 2008, Taiwan’s investors flocked to the mainland. Many of the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that had powered Taiwan’s economic rise found themselves facing severe cost pressures in the 1980s and 1990s. Their prospects were reversed, however, when they gained the opportunity to move operations to the mainland, where land and labor were abundant and local governments were ready with generous benefits to entice Taiwanese investments.

The first wave of Taiwanese investors on the mainland comprised traditional manufacturers, many of them supplying merchandise to international brands on a contract basis. These firms were only marginally competitive, given Taiwan’s high costs and tightening regulatory environment. The mainland gave them a new lease on life, and while some manufacturing jobs were lost, overall Taiwan’s domestic economy was boosted by the firms’ growing profitability, and Taiwanese willing to work in the mainland earned a premium. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s high-tech sector – including chip fabricators – expanded rapidly.

The flow of investment to the mainland – and the flow of high-value components from Taiwan to Taiwanese firms’ mainland-based assembly plants – continued into the 1990s. By the middle of the decade, high-tech firms were following their lower-tech predecessors across the Strait, and the island’s leaders were beginning to worry that Taiwan’s economy was becoming dependent on the mainland. President Lee Teng-hui attempted to redirect the flow of investment to Southeast Asia.

Neither Lee nor his successor, Chen Shui-bian, was able to stem the rising tide of cross-strait trade and investment. During Chen’s presidency the rate of increase rose sharply. Taiwan’s GDP growth – which averaged over 5 percent annually in the 1990s – fluctuated wildly during the Chen years, dragged up and down by recessions and recoveries in its export markets.

Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency began with the recession of 2008-2009. While the island’s economy recovered relatively quickly, it took a hard hit, and economic confidence has not revived. Ma’s economic strategy has been rooted in ever-deepening economic ties between Taiwan and the mainland; under his leadership, the two sides finalized more than 20 agreements, including an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA). Under Ma, the number of Taiwanese crossing to the mainland each year rose, and the government opened the island to mainland tourists. The tourists, who arrived in droves, sparked a sharp upturn in Taiwan’s tourism industry, but their relations with Taiwanese were not always easy.

Although Ma’s strategy produced some high-profile benefits for the island, Taiwan’s voters were no longer convinced that closer ties with the PRC served their long-term interests, and the percentage of Taiwanese who believed the relationship was progressing too quickly began to rise. Media and activist voices began calling attention to problems like inequality (which increased rapidly in the 1990s and 2000s, but has since leveled off) and the lack of opportunity for new entrants into the job market. Evidence that the island’s manufacturing was hollowing out increased. Meanwhile, GDP growth was sluggish by Taiwan’s standards, remaining below 5 percent through Ma’s second term. (It was negative in the third quarter of 2015.)

Flagging economic confidence was closely linked to the Ma administration’s cross-strait policy, but cross-strait policy also had an independent effect. From the onset of cross-strait interactions, critics complained Taiwan was making itself vulnerable to the PRC. Allowing Taiwan’s economy to become dependent on the mainland, they argued, would give the PRC political leverage that it eventually would use to draw Taiwan into an unwanted unification deal.

During the Chen Shui-bian administration, the primary concern among voters was that Chen would challenge the mainland too aggressively, leading to a loss of economic opportunity and political confrontation. But under Ma, the concern shifted to the opposite extreme: Voters worried that he would accommodate the mainland too generously, and in the process cede Taiwan’s freedom of action to Beijing.

These two sets of concerns came together in a series of social movements sharply critical of the Ma administration. The 2008 Wild Strawberry student movement targeted cross-strait relations. The protesters criticized the Ma government’s friendly treatment of a PRC envoy. In order to avoid offending him, officials ordered Taiwan’s national flag removed from places he visited, prompting demonstrations that were suppressed by police. The Wild Strawberries demanded the president stand up more strongly for Taiwan and its people.

In 2012, the Anti-Media Monopolization Movement arose to challenge a mainland-linked company’s purchase of one of Taiwan’s biggest media groups. The movement was successful, but it tapped into deep anxiety about the PRC’s rising influence over Taiwan – anxiety that did not disappear when the media merger failed.

The following year saw two major movements. The movement against forced housing demolitions struck a chord with Taiwanese who found themselves priced out of the housing market. Rising housing prices, too, were linked to the mainland, because much of the money for real estate speculation came from Taiwanese businesspeople earning profits on the mainland.

The second protest movement of 2013 was sparked by the death of a conscript who was being punished for a minor infraction. Taiwan’s mandatory military service has long been a source of dissatisfaction; Taiwan’s armed forces are in the midst of a transition to an all-volunteer force. Nonetheless, the fatal incident catalyzed a huge movement to address problems in the military. The movement also called attention to abuses of state power more broadly.

The wave of popular movements culminated in 2014 when a group of young activists that came to be called the Sunflower Movement occupied the legislative chamber for a month. Their primary target was a cross-strait services trade agreement, but their message was complex. While most of the Sunflower activists opposed the substance of the agreement on the grounds that it would hurt small service providers in Taiwan, their main objection was to the “black box” process by which the agreement was negotiated and ratified.

The KMT had promised to subject the agreement to a thorough legislative review, but when the DPP held up the process, the legislator in charge of shepherding the bill lost patience and scheduled a vote before the review was completed. It was this action that sparked the Sunflowers’ entry into the legislative chamber.

These popular movements – all of which activated concerns about Taiwan’s economic situation and its vulnerability to mainland pressure – shaped the new political environment in which the January elections will take place. The Sunflower Movement energized the DPP and helped propel its victory in the 2014 local elections, and their combined momentum helped launch Tsai Ing-wen’s presidential bid.

Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency was built around the belief that the best way to secure Taiwan’s economic future and political freedom of action was to cultivate close relations with the PRC. The meeting between Ma and his PRC counterpart, Xi Jinping, in November was a strong affirmation of that strategy – it showed that PRC leaders could relax their preconditions for meeting Taiwan’s leaders if they believed it was in their interest to pursue a better relationship with the island.

But the Xi-Ma meeting came too late to change the outcome of the elections because Taiwan’s voters had already lost faith in the Ma strategy. The combination of economic malaise, skepticism about the benefits of closer cross-strait relations, and social mobilization against the Ma strategy on a number of issues had driven Taiwan’s society away from KMT and its agenda.

The KMT’s electoral woes are often blamed on Ma’s performance in office, but the party’s problems are larger than one man. Taiwanese leaders must navigate between relying too heavily on the PRC and drifting too far from Taiwan’s important neighbor. After nearly eight years under Ma Ying-jeou’s leadership, Taiwan’s electorate has decided it’s time for a course correction.

Taiwan’s voters are not seeking a break with the PRC – that’s why Tsai’s approach to cross-strait relations emphasizes maintaining the status quo and avoiding either extreme. But it appears that voters are ready to dial back the pace and intensity of cross-strait rapprochement. If that’s still the case on January 16, the DPP can expect a big victory.