As Taiwan prepares for polls, China’s Xi Jinping issues a warning on reunification

Chinese President Xi Jinping has reiterated, not for the first and certainly not for the last time, that Taiwan will be reunified with the mainland.

PREMIUM

Delivering his annual New Year’s Eve address, Xi served a warning: “China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.

It was a hard turn from Xi’s last year’s message where he had mentioned people on either side of the Taiwan Strait are “members of one and the same family.”

According to the Chinese version of his speech, Xi said: “The reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability” while, as Reuters pointed out, the official English translation published by the Xinhua news agency used a more simple phrase: "China will surely be reunified".

Semantics aside, Xi’s statement assumes significance as it was made in the backdrop of the upcoming presidential polls in Taiwan on January 13 in which cross-strait ties — or ties between China and Taiwan — are a critical electoral issue.

The election will decide how Taiwan, officially, the Republic of China, an island of some 23.5 million people off the southern Chinese coast, will handle an increasingly belligerent Beijing’s threats – both military and economic — of merging it with the mainland.

Background of frayed China-Taiwan ties

Beijing claims the democratically-ruled island is a breakaway region though it has been ruled independently — transitioning from a military dictatorship to a democracy over decades — since 1949 when the Communist Party of China (CPC) came to power in the mainland; Beijing has also not ruled out the use of force if necessary to merge it though the Chinese narrative talks of “peaceful reunification”.

At the centre of Beijing’s claims is the ‘one-China principle’ which says that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the sole legitimate government of China. The vast majority of countries including India follow that principle, maintaining only informal diplomatic ties with Taiwan; currently, only 13 countries and Vatican City recognise Taiwan.

For Xi, Taiwan is a missing piece of the puzzle following the handover of Hong Kong from Britain and Macau from Portugal; without Taiwan’s merger, the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation would be incomplete.

Xi’s comments also come in the backdrop of the ongoing Sino-US tension on the self-ruled island given that Washington’s close (even if informal) ties with the island: The message in the speech was also directed at the US.

In November, Xi told US President Joe Biden that Taiwan was “…the biggest, most potentially dangerous issue in U.S.-China relations…”

The election in Taiwan

Ties with China are an important issue in the three-way January 13 presidential race. Incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has to step down having completed two terms as president.

Vice-president, Lai Ching-te, who has been termed as a “dangerous separatist” by Beijing is DPP’s candidate in the race. The other two candidates are Hou Yu-ih, the former mayor of New Taipei City who is the candidate for the main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party, and Ko Wen-je, the former Taipei mayor, is the third candidate for the Taiwan People’s Party, which he founded.

“Unsurprisingly, how to handle “cross-strait” relations has dominated the campaign for Taiwan’s elections. The China factor and Beijing’s “reunification” narrative have played out differently in lead candidates' discourse, although all three have all urged peaceful relations with Beijing and claimed to be open to communication,” Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, from National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan, and a former advisor to the European Parliament, said.

DPP’s Lai, in fact, has pushed his party’s campaign as a choice between democracy and autocracy.

“Through his messaging, Lai has managed to skilfully capitalise on Taiwan’s identity as already a reliable democratic member of the international community, an identity which has consolidated under a DPP, rather than KMT leadership, at a time when China’s global image has deteriorated,” Ferenczy said.

Taipei-based academic Sana Hashmi felt Xi’s latest speech could swing voters in favour of the DPP.

“The KMT’s portrayal of voting for the DPP as a war choice and supporting the KMT as a peace vote redirects focus from the genuine and continual threat posed by China,” Hashmi, a fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, and fellow at George H. W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations, said.

“Xi’s New Year’s message on unification serves as another reminder to the voters of Taiwan’s persistent challenges. His statement might influence the voting pattern. There’s potential for this to aid the DPP presidential candidate, who already holds a lead in the polls,” she said.

On her part, outgoing President Tsai gave a speech on January 1 and took questions from the media at a press conference.

“As we further our international cooperation, we hope that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait can take on shared responsibilities…We also hope, by way of peace, parity, democracy, and dialogue, to jointly seek a long-term, stable way forward for our peaceful coexistence,” she said.

“As the world sees renewed conflict between freedom and democracy versus authoritarianism, Taiwan's choice remains this: we continue to defend democracy and protect peace,” Tsai said.

When asked about Xi’s speech, Tsai said the most important principle on what course to follow in relations with China was democracy.

"This is taking the joint will of Taiwan's people to make a decision. After all, we are a democratic country," she said, according to agency reports from Taipei.

China should respect the outcome of Taiwan's election and it is the responsibility of both sides to maintain peace and stability in the strait, Tsai added.

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• Taiwan
• New Year's Eve
• Xi Jinping
• India's Position On Taiwan

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