The China Factor in Taiwan’s Midterms

In light of August’s palpable increase in tensions across the Taiwan Strait, analysts around the world are keenly watching how China’s military demonstrations will impact Taiwan’s upcoming midterms, set for November 26. Although intuitively we may think that these threats will become a central talking point for the upcoming election, the reality is seemingly the opposite. Chinese military threats are not driving discourse for the midterm elections – at least not yet. On the contrary, the key issues defining major races in Taiwan have little to do with China.

While it remains to be seen to what extent the recent military drills will impact Taiwan’s domestic politics, it is important not to overstate their influence on November’s elections.

Although it is well documented by political scientists that cross-strait relations dominate Taiwan’s presidential elections, midterm elections are different. Instead, midterm elections – which involve selecting local-level leaders, including mayors and city council members – are driven by domestic-facing issues that do not necessarily intersect with cross-strait politics in the same way. In presidential elections, issues of national security, Taiwan’s international standing, and perceptions of how Taiwan and China will interact drive election discourse. In midterm elections however, national security is not the main point of discussion. Instead, it is about convincing voters that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) or Kuomintang (KMT) candidate is more competent, can deliver better domestic development, or is more representative of Taiwanese civil society.

Political party identity and national identity are both still critical, but discourse is driven by the quality of the DPP and KMT, rather than their relations with China. The DPP and KMT still try their best to mobilize voters based on how they relate to these parties, but mayors and city councilors have little sway over national defense. Instead of discussing cross-strait relations on a national and international scale, midterm election discourse centers around which party is qualitatively better for improving Taiwan’s domestic political development.

The three most contentious races – the mayorship contests in Taipei, New Taipei, and Taoyuan – best exemplify just how little the Chinese military threat discourse has impacted the upcoming elections. In Taipei, the three-way race between the DPP candidate, ex-Minister of Health Chen Shih-Chung; KMT family royalty Chiang Wan-an, reputed to be the great-grandson of Chiang Kai-shek; and center-right candidate Huang Shan-shan of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has been an ongoing standoff for the past six months.

Chen enjoyed significant popularity as the leader of Taiwan’s COVID-19 response at a time in which Taiwan avoided the expansive lockdowns that affected the rest of the world, but large swaths of the public are still unhappy with Taiwan’s transition away from its zero COVID approach. Taipei has historically swung pan-Blue, toward the KMT’s ideological bent, to begin with, and perceptions of Chen are deeply tied to views of how the Tsai administration has fared in the fight against COVID-19.

That being said, Chiang Wan-an and Huang Shan-shan may divide the pan-Blue vote in a way that benefits Chen, even if the TPP seems to be undecided on whether to maintain its current “light blue” affiliation or to angle for the backing of “deep blues” in recent times.

In New Taipei, the standoff between two party heavyweights – the KMT’s Hou You-yi and the DPP’s Lin Chia-lung – has received less attention, perhaps due to the strength of Hou’s position. Hou, one of the KMT’s most popular politicians, is touted as a potential presidential candidate in 2024 for the KMT.

Taoyuan, perhaps, has driven the midterms political discourse the most – not because of anything to do with cross-strait relations, but because of a highly publicized plagiarism scandal involving the DPP’s candidate Lin Chih-chien. Lin’s Master’s thesis was declared by National Taiwan University to have plagiarized major sections, leading to a massive public debacle that dominated news cycles far more than any of the ongoing military threats. The scandal ultimately led to Lin’s withdrawal as DPP candidate in favor of legislator Cheng Yun-peng.

Lin was facing former premier Simon Chang of the KMT, who much media discourse interprets as a relatively weak candidate. The DPP was in a strong position and hoped to hang onto its gains in traditionally pan-Blue Taoyuan under the current Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan, another mayor touted as a potential presidential candidate in 2024. But the DPP has been significantly impacted by Lin’s thesis scandal, going from a position of relative strength to weakness. The DPP could very likely lose Taoyuan to the KMT because of this plagiarism debacle, further underscoring the impact of local, even individual, factors on Taiwan’s midterm elections.

These three hotly contested elections were ongoing long before the recent Chinese military drills. Domestically, the drills have not changed major perceptions of these candidates or how they have decided to campaign. Chen Shih-chung has not begun to talk substantively about national security, and the Master’s thesis scandals are far from over. Another corruption scandal, this one centering on KMT incumbent Yilan county magistrate Lin Zi-miao, is ongoing but has received significantly less attention compared to the thesis scandal. Lin was accused by prosecutors of acruing 78.45 million Taiwanese dollars in illicit gains thought to come from corruption, money laundering, and forgery.

This perhaps reflects one of the particularities of Taiwanese politics: A scandal about educational background is more important to voters than one about corruption, and both may be more salient than an existential military threat.

This is not to say that China’s military drills have not impacted Taiwan’s domestic politics, however. On August 10, just days after the drills ended, KMT vice chair Andrew Hsia headed to China on a previously planned visit. During his two-week trip, Hsia met with Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) deputy director Chen Yuanfeng, as well as with Zhang Zhijung, the director of the semi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (and a former TAO head).

Younger members of the KMT launched a petition against the visit, noting that this would be interpreted as the KMT continuing to be overly pro-China party at a time in which chair Eric Chu has sought to rebrand the party as pro-U.S. Fears this would affect other candidates led Hsia to resign from his position as an adviser to the KMT’s Taichung mayoral candidate. While Hsia’s trip is not likely to significantly change the outcome of the elections, the KMT’s mixed messaging following the drills shows that divides within the party continue to run deep.

However, compared to previous elections, there is not a clear dividing line between the KMT and DPP regarding their platforms on domestic issues. This may be because the last set of local elections in 2018 took place at the same time as national referendums. Though the midterm elections this year will again coincide with a referendum, the only question being voted on is whether to lower the voting age or not, a proposal that nominally has bipartisan support. As such, the choice of vote this time around may ultimately come down to party ID.

Although the DPP is still largely popular, there is a real possibility that the KMT could still win the three major races in Taipei, New Taipei, and Taoyuan. Even if the KMT has experienced a succession of losses in the past decade, the party’s power at the local level is far from broken, and the KMT will be hoping to replicate its 2018 successes.

If the KMT clenches these victories, outside observers may infer that the KMT is on a rebound, and they might extrapolate from this that Chinese military threats may have pushed public support back toward the KMT. This, however, would be a misinterpretation. The KMT’s lead in these three races has little to do with cross-strait politics or with the ongoing military threats from China. The correlation between the Chinese military threats and potential KMT victories should not be read as a causal link.

The split between independence versus unification is and continues to be the most important political cleavage in Taiwanese politics, but it does not necessarily flare up for local elections as it would for presidential elections. Midterms in Taiwan are much more about local politics.

The lack of discussion over China’s military threats also is reflective of how Taiwanese understand this particular moment of heightened tensions. Instead of treating China’s qualitative change in the status quo as an existential moment worthy of being called a “crisis,” Taiwanese citizens have instead taken a calm, collective attitude. It is true that the 2024 election will be dominated by headlines about China and its coercive encroachment upon Taiwan, but this would be the case regardless of the state of Chinese military threats. Similar to how the Hong Kong protests colored how cross-strait issues were discussed in the 2020 election, the military drills will likely be the frame through which cross-strait issues are seen in 2024.

One other way China could potentially impact Taiwan’s domestic politics is through the upcoming National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. The major party event is set to open on October 16, a little over a month before Taiwan’s midterms. CCP leader Xi Jinping is likely to make a speech referencing China’s recent White Paper on the “Taiwan Question,” which heavily emphasized Beijing’s vision of “One Country, Two Systems” as a form of unification for Taiwan.

The recent White Paper has been largely shrugged off by the Taiwanese public. Polling from 2021 shows that almost 90 percent of the Taiwanese public oppose “One Country, Two Systems.” But Xi’s major speeches, like the one he will give in mid-October, can impact Taiwan’s domestic politics. In 2019 when Xi gave a speech discussing “One Country, Two Systems,” it led to a spike in support for Tsai and the DPP within Taiwan. If Xi’s speech at the National Party Congress in October uses the same type of wording, it could give the DPP a last minute edge in the election, even if politicians are unlikely to incorporate it into their own electoral rhetoric.

How will China’s military threats affect Taiwan’s upcoming midterm elections? Data points from campaign speeches, rhetoric, and issue frames indicate so far that the impact is minimal. Voting preferences for candidates have not drastically shifted after the military drills, and candidates are not discussing the drills in any particular detail. Although some candidates are making mention of China and the need to defend Taiwan, these are often passing comments and not the feature of any major campaign event or speech.

While the underlying psychological effect of living with the existential threat from China continues to be a constant for Taiwanese people, the shock of China’s military moves in August 2022 has affected Taiwan’s international audience more than its domestic population.