Eric Chu, the chairman of Taiwan's ruling Kuomintang party, held a party-to-party meeting in Beijing on Monday with Communist Party of China General Secretary and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The meeting lasted only an hour — not long enough to make serious headway on prickly cross-strait issues, but long enough for the leaders to develop a feel for one another ahead of Taiwan's 2016 presidential election, in which Chu is expected to be Kuomintang's candidate.
Both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China have much to be anxious about in the upcoming election. The election is shaping up to be a rough one for the Kuomintang. China has preferred a Kuomintang presidency across the strait because the party is seen as being amenable to the closer economic ties China hopes could one day bring Taiwan back under Beijing's rule. However, the ruling party appears to be losing ground to the Democratic Progressive Party, which traditionally has pushed for Taiwanese sovereignty and self-determination. In local elections held in November, the Kuomintang performed poorly. The party went into the election controlling 15 of Taiwan's 22 cities and counties and lost all but six to the Democratic Progressive Party or independents aligned with it.
In Taiwan, this defeat was viewed as a referendum on the Kuomintang's cross-strait strategy and a bellwether of the upcoming presidential election. Under the leadership of President Ma Ying-jeou, the ruling party's strategy toward China has been to strengthen Taiwan's flagging economy through trade liberalization with China and to accommodate China on sovereignty issues — preserving de facto independence without asserting de jure independence — in order to expand Taiwan's international space.
The Kuomintang has been able to score some modest successes on this second point. Under Ma, Taiwan was able to sign free trade agreements with Singapore and New Zealand and participate in some international organizations from which it had been barred, with tacit Chinese approval that Taiwan would not have received under a Democratic Progressive Party presidency.
However, this strategy was able to deliver only 2 percent gross domestic product growth in 2013, far below Ma's promise of 6 percent. This meager growth proved devastating at the polls in 2014. It is not unusual for voters to punish presidents and their parties for failing to deliver on ambitious campaign promises, but the Democratic Progressive Party framed Ma's strategy as a failure of national security. The party argued that Ma's strategy has increased Taiwan's dependence on China without bringing any concrete benefits to the Taiwanese. The party has painted a picture of the Kuomintang as a party of Beijing's stooges, ready to sell Taiwanese interests down the river. This perception led to massive protests in March 2014 as the Kuomintang prepared to push through a cross-strait trade pact. The same narrative will almost certainly be directed at the Kuomintang in the 2016 presidential election.
Greater regional developments are exacerbating the perception of national threat that the Democratic Progressive Party is basing its campaign on as well. While Taiwan has traditionally worried about Chinese invasion from the west, China's construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea and increasing military activity in the East China Sea may enable China to cut Taiwan off from the north and the south.
Worse, China's maritime assertiveness has encouraged the United States, Taiwan's greatest patron, to focus on building ties with Japan and the Philippines as it rebalances military resources to the region. Despite its best efforts to play up its value as an ally, Taiwan has rarely been the focus of much attention from the United States under President Barack Obama. The mix of anemic growth under Ma and enhanced threat perception will make it easy for the Democratic Progressive Party to convince the Taiwanese to reject the Kuomintang's cross-strait political program.
Whatever the result of the 2016 election, China is likely to have much to worry about in the future. Even if Chu is able to win the presidency in 2016, long-term conditions appear to be against the Kuomintang. Taiwan is aging faster than any other country in Asia, including Japan. The generation of refugees that fled to Taiwan with the armies of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek is dying off. When this generation passes, China's message of common heritage will become less and less convincing for the Taiwanese. The aging population will also make it more difficult for Taiwan to compete, which will diminish the Kuomintang's ability to produce the immediate economic results necessary for electoral victory. In short, the game for China grows harder in the long run, not easier.
