China failed to sway Taiwan’s election. What next?

TAIPEI — China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has tied his country’s great power status to a singular promise: unifying the motherland with Taiwan, which the Chinese Communist Party sees as sacred, lost territory. A few weeks ago, Xi called this a “historical inevitability.”

But Taiwan’s election Saturday, handing the presidency to a party that promotes the island’s separate identity for a third time in a row, confirmed that this boisterous democracy has moved even further from China and its dream of unification.

After a campaign of festivallike rallies, where huge crowds shouted, danced, and waved matching flags, Taiwan’s voters ignored China’s warnings that a vote for the Democratic Progressive Party was a vote for war. They made that choice anyway.

Lai Ching-te, a former doctor and the current vice president, who China sees as a staunch separatist, will be Taiwan’s next leader. It’s an act of self-governed defiance that proved what many already knew: Beijing’s arm-twisting of Taiwan — economically and with military harassment at sea and in the air — has only strengthened the island’s desire to protect its de facto independence and move beyond China’s giant shadow.

“The more hard-line, tougher approach hasn’t worked,” said Susan Shirk, a research professor at the University of California San Diego and the author of “Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise.” “That’s the reality of Taiwanese politics.”

That evolution, cultural and political, comes with risks. Lai’s victory forces Xi to face a lack of progress. And while China’s full response will play out over months or years, China’s Taiwan affairs office said Saturday night that the election cannot change the direction of cross-strait relations, effectively ensuring that the dynamic of brinkmanship and stress will continue and most likely intensify.

China and the United States have made Taiwan a test of competing sensitivities and visions. To Beijing, the island is a remnant of its civil war that the United States has no business meddling with. To Washington, it is the first line of defense for global stability, a democracy of 23 million people and the microprocessor factory for the world.

The gargantuan stakes add gravity to every word or policy that Lai or his party might deliver now and after his inauguration in May. With Taiwan’s sense of self and China’s expectations in conflict, Xi is not expected to sit idly by.

At the very least, China will keep trying to manipulate Taiwan’s politics with disinformation, threats, and economic incentives. Chinese officials have also hinted that they could target trade, eliminating more tariff concessions.

Expanded military drills are another possibility. Chinese fighter jets, drones, and ships already encroach on Taiwan almost daily.

China has also shown that it will keep prodding the United States to pressure Taiwan and to cut military support. Messages of alarm are becoming common in US-China diplomacy.

In Washington, on the eve of Taiwan’s election, Liu Jianchao, the head of the Chinese Communist Party’s international department, met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The United States said Blinken “reiterated the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

Liu, based on other official statements, most likely warned the United States not to intervene “in the Taiwan region” — a complaint sparked by an announcement that a delegation of former officials would head to Taipei after the election. Such visits have been common for decades. China’s Foreign Ministry condemned “the American side’s brazen chattering.”

There are no plans in Washington to go silent, however, or constrain cooperation. Quite the opposite. Last year, the Biden administration announced $345 million in military aid for Taiwan, with weapons drawn from American stockpiles. Bills in Congress would also tighten economic ties to Taiwan, easing tax policy and laying a foundation for economic sanctions against China if it attacks.

Having worked with Americans as vice president, Lai can move faster, analysts said, possibly into more sensitive areas.

The United States could increase collaboration on cybersecurity, strengthening communication networks to a point that blurs the line with (or prepares for) intelligence sharing. It could seek to place military logistics equipment on the island — a strategy the Pentagon is introducing throughout the region.

It is also an open secret that US military advisers, mostly retired officers, have a growing presence in Taiwan. Some Taiwanese officials call them “English teachers.” Under Lai, many more could be on the way.

“Beijing has been turning a blind eye, so the question is: What size of that presence will cross the Rubicon?” said Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist at the Australian National University’s Taiwan Studies Program. He added: “Hopefully each additional step will not be seen as overtly provocative to elicit or justify a massive Chinese reaction.”

War, of course, is not inevitable. It may be less likely right now, when China is busy with a dismal economy and the United States with wars in Europe and the Middle East.

Some analysts also hope that Xi will find a way to claim victory in the election and step back from antagonism. With a thirdparty candidate, Ko Wen-je, winning 26 percent of the vote with a vague focus on a middle path in China relations, Lai won with just 40 percent.

“It’s in China’s national interest to expand the path of peaceful integration so they won’t have to fight,” Shirk said. “There are a lot of people watching this interaction and Beijing’s reaction — all the investors are watching it, too.”

‘It’s in China’s national interest to expand the path of peaceful integration so they won’t have to fight.’

SUSAN SHIRK, China specialist and research professor at the University of California San Diego