Taiwan's new president Lai Ching-te speaks on stage during the inauguration ceremony outside the presidential office building in Taipei, Taiwan on May 20.Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters
Beijing should recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty and the will of the Taiwanese people to maintain their independence from China, the island’s new President said as he was sworn-in Monday.
Lai Ching-te vowed to maintain the peaceful status quo across the Taiwan Strait and continue to build ties with the West in the face of aggression from Beijing, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan, known officially as the Republic of China.
“We have a nation insofar as we have sovereignty,” Mr. Lai said in his inaugural address Monday. “The Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other. All of the people of Taiwan must come together to safeguard our nation; all our political parties ought to oppose annexation and protect sovereignty; and no one should entertain the idea of giving up our national sovereignty in exchange for political power.”
In January, Mr. Lai won a historic third consecutive term for his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which does not support unification with China.
Beijing views the DPP with deep suspicion, and cross-Strait tensions have spiked since the election of Mr. Lai’s predecessor Tsai Ing-wen in 2016 and the increasingly hostile posture of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
During the election campaign, Beijing branded Mr. Lai a “separatist” and openly courted the opposition Kuomintang, Taiwan’s historic ruling party. But the KMT failed to expand its support, even after running a moderate campaign that rejected Beijing’s model for absorbing Taiwan and amid widespread dissatisfaction with the DPP’s domestic record.
In his speech Monday, Mr. Lai called his win “another hard-earned victory for democracy.”
“I hope that China will face the reality of the Republic of China’s existence, respect the choices of the people of Taiwan, and in good faith, choose dialogue over confrontation, exchange over containment, and under the principles of parity and dignity, engage in co-operation with the legal government chosen by Taiwan’s people,” he said.
In recent years, Beijing has staged large-scale war games around Taiwan, fired missiles and flown sorties around the island’s airspace, and harassed shipping around Kinmen, the Taiwanese territory closest to China.
Reaction to Mr. Lai’s inauguration was relatively muted Monday. Ahead of Mr. Lai’s speech, China added three U.S. weapons manufacturers that have sold goods to Taiwan to a list of “unreliable entities,” while in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters at a regular press conference that “Taiwan independence is a dead end.”
While a war over Taiwan is sometimes presented as inevitable – in both the West and China – the peaceful status quo has persisted for decades now, and survived periods of intense tensions without breaking out into open conflict.
Most experts agree China is years away from being militarily ready to invade Taiwan – and may never be capable of undertaking what would be the largest aquatic operation in history, with the threat of pulling in the United States and regional powers such as Japan. The Chinese economy is in a fragile state, and most experts agree Beijing does not want to risk further confrontation with the U.S. amid an expanding trade war, as well as the disruption any conflict would bring.
Taiwan cannot afford to be complacent however, Mr. Lai said, promising to strengthen the island’s defence, including by “standing side-by-side with other democratic countries” in order to expand Taiwan’s deterrence and achieve “our goal of peace through strength.”
In April, U.S. lawmakers approved an US$8.1-billion military aid package to Taiwan and other American allies in the Indo-Pacific, though some have expressed concern over Washington’s future commitment to the island amid weariness over the war in Ukraine and the continuing conflict in the Middle East. By one estimate, Taiwan has a backlog of nearly US$20-billion in undelivered arms and military equipment from the U.S.
Writing this month, Taiwan’s outgoing foreign minister, Joseph Wu, dismissed arguments that international support for Ukraine was “draining attention and resources away from the task of standing up to Chinese aggression.”
“Taiwan welcomes the U.S. Congress’s recent decision to continue American military support for Ukraine,” he said. “Such a display of unabated and unquestionable resolve to safeguard democracy does not detract from the defence of places such as Taiwan: in fact, it is a key deterrent against adventurism on Beijing’s part.”
If Mr. Lai faces a complicated international outlook, the domestic picture appears perhaps even more so. The DPP lost its majority in Taiwan’s legislature, where no party now holds overall control, and the new president may struggle to advance his agenda in the face of hostility from the KMT and the upstart Taiwan People’s Party (TPP).
On Sunday, thousands of TPP supporters protested in Taipei, following brawls in the legislature over a KMT-TPP plan to reform the chamber, which would give lawmakers greater power to scrutinize the government. DPP lawmakers fought with their opposition colleagues as they tried to block the plan, which they claim is being forced through without the constitutionally-required consultation.
In his address Monday, Mr. Lai said the divided parliament was “a result of the people’s choice” and called on all parties to work together.