Taiwan election: a fight for national identity

Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has won an unprecedented third consecutive presidential victory, in an election closely watched by the world.

President-elect Lai Ching-te is taking over from Tsai Ing-wen, who has served the maximum two terms in the top job, after claiming more than 40% of the vote. "This is a night that belongs to Taiwan," Lai, currently vice president, told supporters at a rally after his two main opposition rivals conceded defeat following Saturday's election. "We managed to keep Taiwan on the map of the world." 

Global leaders have congratulated Lai, "drawing ire" from China, which had hoped to see the pro-sovereignty DPP ousted, said The Guardian. In a statement issued after the election result was announced, Beijing insisted once again that "Taiwan is part of China".

Lai's victory, said CNN, is "a further snub to eight years of increasingly strongarm tactics towards Taiwan" by China under President Xi Jinping, who has vowed that the island's eventual "reunification" with the mainland is "a historical inevitability". The result is also "another major blow for Taiwan's Kuomintang, which back warmer relations with Beijing and have not held the presidency since 2016".

While most foreign policy experts are speculating about the future of the island's fractious relationship with the mainland as tensions increase, others are focusing on what the election reveals about the changing face of Taiwan.

How does Taiwan's population identify?

Identity is "a hugely sensitive issue for this island of 23 million people", wrote NPR's international correspondent Emily Feng from capital Taipei. Although more than 90% of the population "can trace their roots to mainland China", the majority "now identify in polls as Taiwanese only", which is "a huge shift from just 30 years ago".

Taiwan's "burgeoning identity" is being "tested" by the election, wrote Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, the BBC's Taipei-based Asia correspondent. This was the first election in which all three presidential candidates were of Taiwanese descent, rather than from families that arrived from China in 1949 after losing the Chinese Civil War.

Having been defeated by Mao Zedong's communist army, the nationalists, led by General Chiang Kai-shek, and roughly 1.5 million supporters fled across the Taiwan Strait to set up a government-in-exile on the island. The government immediately enforced Mandarin Chinese as the national language.

Today, in Taipei, Mandarin (a northern Chinese dialect) is used for education and commerce. But the majority of the island's population speak Taiwanese, a version of a dialect from the southern Chinese region of Fujian that is "as different from Mandarin as English is from Portuguese", said Wingfield-Hayes. Many mix both languages when speaking to fellow Taiwanese.

A generational divide exists, however, with younger people more likely to be turning their backs on the mainland and seeing themselves as mainly Taiwanese.

Many of the DPP's young supporters also speak fluent English and are "passionate about the environment and LGBTQ rights", said Wingfield-Hayes. For some young people, Mandarin is "the language of a colonial oppressor".

"The real Taiwanese people are Indigenous people," said NPR's Feng. "Everyone else came here after. They're Chinese."

What next?

Lai, who takes over as president in May, is "openly loathed" by China's Communist Party leaders, said CNN. His victory is "unlikely to lead to any improvement in ties between Beijing and Taipei".

A spokesperson for China's Taiwan Affairs Office said the election result "does not represent the mainstream view on the island".

Actually, said CNN, the results show voters "backing the DPP's view that Taiwan is a de facto sovereign nation that should bolster defences against China's threats and deepen relations with fellow democratic countries, even if that means economic punishment or military intimidation by Beijing".

However, although the DPP emphasises that Taiwan should not be subordinate to the CCP, Lai has repeatedly ruled out a push for official independence.

The "younger, more ambivalent generation" desire peace with China, said Wingfield-Hayes. But most have no desire for reunification with the mainland either.

While Beijing will continue to push a message of a unified China, it is the people of Taiwan who are "deciding what they want to be".