The result in Taiwan’s presidential and parliamentary election will chart the trajectory of relations with China over the next four years.
The result in Taiwan’s presidential and parliamentary election will chart the trajectory of relations with China over the next four years.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Apart from tensions with China, the election largely hinged on domestic issues, such as a slowed economy, housing affordability, a yawning gap between rich and poor, and unemployment.
Beijing strongly opposes the front-runner in the presidential race, current Vice President Lai Ching-te, of the governing Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP.
Lai and incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen reject China’s sovereignty claims over Taiwan, a former Japanese colony that split from the mainland amid civil war in 1949.
The United States, which is bound by its laws to provide Taiwan with the weapons needed to defend itself, has pledged support for whichever government emerges, reinforced by the Biden administration’s plans to send an unofficial delegation made up of former senior officials to the island shortly after the election.
Taiwan’s election is seen as having “real and lasting influence on the geopolitical landscape,” said Gabrielle Reid, associate director with the global intelligence consultancy S-RM.
That partly reflects inevitable cycles in demand for computer chips and other exports from the high-tech, heavily trade-dependent manufacturing base, and a slowing of the Chinese economy.
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