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What a difference a few months make. First, Ms Tsai emerged surprisingly strongl
y from a primary contest in which she beat off William Lai Ching-te, the former
mayor of Tainan, who challenged her to be the DPP candidate to contest the next
presidential election. The primary, curiously, is decided by taking opinion poll
s of voters. Some experts suspect Ms Tsai’s camp of massaging the outcome. But
there is no doubt that Ms Tsai’s firm support for pro-democracy protests curren
tly roiling Hong Kong (see article) boosted her standing at home. She has since
welcomed several dozen Hong Kong protesters who reportedly intend to seek politi
cal asylum in Taiwan. By contrast, the protests have thrown the opposition Kuomi
ntang (KMT), which is conciliatory towards China, off balance.
With a fair wind at her back, Ms Tsai breezed off to America on July 11th. Her t
wo-day stay in New York, complete with a ferry ride near the Statue of Liberty,
was intended to ooze normality, but visits by presidents of Taiwan are unusual a
nd heavily circumscribed. The country has no formal diplomatic relations with Am
erica, along with the many other nations that acknowledge the “one-China princi
ple” insisted upon in Beijing. Officially, Ms Tsai was en route to a handful of
diplomatic allies in the Caribbean. But her stay was one of the longest that Am
erica has granted to a leader of the robustly democratic island.
China thundered in vain that America should cancel her visit, during which she m
et members of Congress and delivered a speech at Columbia University in defence
of liberal, democratic values. “Taiwan is not, and will not be, intimidated,”
she said at a reception in New York with representatives of Taiwan’s 17 remaini
ng diplomatic allies. Her Caribbean visit was book-ended by a further two days i
n Colorado.
It all signals an unusual degree of approval by champions of democracy in Congre
ss and by China hawks in Donald Trump’s administration. They have seen tensions
with China rise over trade and cyber-security. Taiwan, too, faces increasing mi
litary and diplomatic pressure over Ms Tsai’s refusal to accept that her island
is part of the Chinese motherland. A Chinese defence white paper this week repe
ated China’s threat of the use of force to prevent Taiwan’s independence. Yet
Ms Tsai has been at pains not wantonly to rile China, unhinge relations across t
he Taiwan Strait and so risk dragging America into a dangerous conflict.
Marks of strengthening relations with Taiwan have mostly been small yet symbolic
. On a previous transit in Houston, Ms Tsai visited NASA, becoming the first Tai
wanese leader to set foot in an American federal agency since 1979, when America
broke off diplomatic relations in favour of China. In May Mr Trump’s national
security adviser, John Bolton, met his Taiwanese counterpart, David Lee, another
first.
Senior members of Ms Tsai’s government joke that having no formal relations wit
h America is an advantage, since Mr Trump, who sometimes seems to prefer autocra
cies to democracies and who seeks an elusive trade deal with China, is less like
ly to notice the thickening of ties. The president has signed off on a more tang
ible measure of assistance for Taiwan: approval for a long-planned sale of arms,
worth $2.2bn, that includes tanks and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. The sale
of more than 60 F-16 fighter jets looks likely soon, too.
China claims to be outraged by the recent sales and has threatened to impose san
ctions on the American companies involved. Yet they are all of a piece with long
-standing bipartisan support for Taiwan’s defence. On July 24th a US warship ma
de what America called a routine transit of the Taiwan Strait. In truth, much Am
erican-supplied equipment is old and vulnerable to China’s new precision-guided
weapons. But the sales remain a powerful signal of America’s backing.
They also do no harm to Ms Tsai’s standing at home—the F-16s had been requeste
d as far back as 2006. Campaigning for Taiwan’s presidential and legislative el
ections next January is heating up. On July 15th, in a similar primary process t
o the DPP’s, the KMT named Han Kuo-yu, mayor of the city of Kaohsiung, as its p
residential candidate. Voters thus face a stark choice. Mr Han, whose family hai
ls from the mainland, is a voluble proponent of appeasing China. He says binding
Taiwan more closely to China’s vast markets will bring prosperity. But it may
also imperil Taiwan’s autonomy.
In contrast to the mousy Ms Tsai, Mr Han is a natural orator with a common touch
. He drives crowds of older, working-class and rural followers wild. With 45% su
pport in the primary, he blew past the runner-up, Terry Gou, a billionaire maker
of iPhones, with 28%.
Mr Han calls Taiwanese independence “more scary” than syphilis. He refers to T
aiwan as a region (that is, of China) rather than the country it is. Yet the Hon
g Kong protests have forced Mr Han to tack away from China. The Communist Party
wants its formula of supposed autonomy for Hong Kong—“one country, two systems
”—to apply one day to Taiwan. “Over my dead body”, Mr Han had to declare.
While Ms Tsai may be seen as the better defender of Taiwanese sovereignty, her c
hances of re-election may be further boosted if Ko Wen-je, the pro-China mayor o
f Taipei, runs as an independent presidential candidate. Mr Gou has not ruled ou
t doing the same. This would split the opposition vote. In a poll published on J
une 22nd, TVBS, a KMT-leaning network, found Ms Tsai ahead with support of 37%,
compared with 29% for Mr Han and 20% for Mr Ko. For now Ms Tsai’s sun is shinin
g.
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