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Taiwan premier quits after poll loss Taiwan premier Jiang Yi-huah quits after poll loss
(35 minutes later)
Taiwan's premier, Jiang Yi-huah, quits after his ruling pro-China party suffers stiff defeat in local elections The Prime Minister of Taiwan, Jiang Yi-huah, has resigned after his ruling pro-China party suffered stiff defeats in local elections.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version. The Kuomintang party (KMT) appears to have lost control of districts across the country, including the mayor's office in the capital, Taipei.
If you want to receive Breaking News alerts via email, or on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App then details on how to do so are available on this help page. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on Twitter to get the latest alerts. Saturday's polls were widely seen as a referendum on relations with China.
KMT supporters had argued for good relations with China, which views Taiwan as a renegade province.
China and Taiwan, a close US ally, have been ruled separately since the end of a civil war in 1949.
Bowing out
Mr Jiang told reporters he was stepping down in order to take responsibility for the defeat.
The race in the capital was watched with particular attention as a test of Ma Ying-jeou's pro-China policy.
In the event, an independent opposition-backed candidate, Ko Wen-je, claimed victory over the KMT's Sean Lien.
Mr Lien publicly bowed in defeat along with his solemn-faced supporters. "We congratulate Mr Ko," he said in his concession speech. "I'm sorry I didn't win this election."
Lin Wen-chih, 48, a film producer who voted for Mr Ko, told AP: "We want to send the Nationalists [KMT] a warning. Taiwan is an independent country. We don't want the Nationalists to take measures that would have it eaten up [by China]."
More than 18 million eligible voters were registered to vote, choosing from among 20,000 candidates who were running for more than 11,000 positions.
Dependence fears
Some voters fear that if the KMT is allowed to continue building strong ties with China, Taiwan may become too economically dependent on the mainland and vulnerable to its pressures to reunify one day, the BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei reports.
They distrust the KMT, regardless of whether the deals signed with Beijing are good for Taiwan, our correspondent says.
KMT supporters, on the other hand, feel that Taiwan needs good relations with its biggest trade partner to breathe new life into the island's ailing economy.
They feared a victory by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could cause relations with China and Taiwan's economy to regress, our correspondent says.
The DPP supports Taiwan's formal independence from China, something Beijing strongly opposes.
In 2016, Taiwan will hold the more important presidential and legislative polls.
Taiwan began allowing truly democratic elections - with opposition party candidates and universal suffrage - in the late 1980s.