New Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te took the oath of office Monday in Taipei, with Lai expected to pledge to protect stability and maintain the status quo in the island’s fraught relationship with China in a speech later in the day, continuing on a path set by his predecessor — much to the chagrin of Beijing.
In taking the oath of office, Lai, 64, succeeds former President Tsai Ing-wen after serving as her vice president for four years. In terms of continuity, he has already followed in Tsai’s footsteps, earning the enmity of Beijing, which has called him a “dangerous separatist.”
But while Lai in 2017 labeled himself a “pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence,” he has taken pains in recent years to put this description in the rearview mirror, espousing the stance outlined by Tsai that Taiwan is already de facto independent — a position that helped propel him to victory in January’s hotly contested election, which was largely framed as a choice between change and continuity.
China, which claims Taiwan as its own and has not ruled out the use of force for uniting it with the mainland, and the United States, Taipei’s top weapons supplier and leading backer, were expected to closely watch the speech for any signals by Lai.
Lai has offered to hold talks with China only to be rebuffed, and the new president was expected to extend that olive branch once again in his speech later Monday.
China, however, has telegraphed that it is unlikely to tamp down the increasing pressure it has put on Taiwan in recent years — moves that have included almost daily incursions by warplanes and warships near the island. In the days ahead of Monday’s inauguration, China’s military reportedly took its exercises a step further, holding drills that conducted mock attacks on foreign vessels near Taiwan.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said last week said “the new leader of the Taiwan region must … make a clear choice between peaceful development or confrontation across the Taiwan Strait.”
Although Taiwan is left with a dwindling number of diplomatic allies that formally recognize it as a country — just 12 after Honduras switched diplomatic recognition for China in March last year — it has in recent years taken a different tack, seeking to cement its role in the global economy while bolstering its ties with like-minded democracies.
In particular, Taiwan has worked to improve informal ties with the United States and Japan, which have both grown increasingly vocal over the importance of “peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait” amid what they view as a rising Chinese military threat to the island.
In recent years, a stream of top U.S. intelligence and military officials have voiced concerns that China will be “ready” to invade Taiwan by 2027, citing Beijing’s growing military prowess.
Biden, himself, has even on several occasions appeared to upend the long-standing U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” — under which the U.S. expresses a strong interest in Taiwan’s security while avoiding an outright promise to defend it — delivering seemingly explicit remarks that Washington would defend it from Chinese attack.
Although those remarks were walked back, China has accused the United States of “hollowing out” its “One China” policy that recognizes Beijing as “the sole legal Government of China” and using Taiwan as a pawn in the growing Sino-U.S. rivalry.
Japan, one of the top U.S. allies in Asia, has also viewed the Chinese military’s actions near Taiwan — which sits just 110 kilometers from Okinawa Prefecture’s Yonaguni Island — with trepidation.
Senior Japanese officials have said a war over Taiwan would also represent an existential crisis for Tokyo, a hint that such a conflict would also draw in the Self-Defense Forces.
But while the specter of war will continue to loom, Lai will also face domestic challenges right out of the gate, especially after his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its majority in Taiwan’s 113-seat parliament.
These include economic concerns among many Taiwanese, but especially younger voters. Lai is expected to introduce reforms for social spending programs such as subsidized child care, national health insurance and care for the elderly. But he will also need to tackle low wages in jobs outside of the island’s renowned semiconductor industry as well as soaring rent and housing prices.
While the Kuomintang and Taiwan People’s Party, which are expected to work together, are likely to endorse these policies or present their own versions, there are likely to be vehement disagreements over a broad spectrum of issues in parliament.
In an example of the hurdles Lai and the DPP will face going forward, lawmakers from his party and the KMT and TPP erupted into fisticuffs in parliament on Friday over reforms to the body, including a controversial proposal to levy criminal penalties for officials found to be lying in parliament.
