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China urges Taiwan to keep close ties as pro-Beijing party routed at polls Taiwan premier resigns after election deals blow to pro-China party
(about 5 hours later)
China urged Taiwan to continue its policy of cooperation with the mainland after the island’s pro-Beijing ruling party was routed in local elections. The Taiwanese premier resigned on Saturday following the election of independent candidate as mayor of Taipei – in a major blow to the island’s pro-China governing party.
The defeat in Saturday’s elections of the Nationalist Party, which lost nine cities and counties, including its longtime strongholds Taipei, the capital, and the major central city of Taichung, led to the resignation of premier Jiang Yi-huah, who heads the cabinet. President Ma Ying-jeou promised to make changes. Premier Jiang Yi-huah resigned hours after polls closed, and president Ma Ying-Jeou announced that he would reshuffle his cabinet.
The election losses could jeopardise six years of talks with China that have led to 21 agreements, helping to lift Taiwan’s half-trillion-dollar economy, while raising Beijing’s hopes for political reunification. Beijing has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, but since taking office in 2008, Ma has set aside the old disputes to ease tensions through talks. Both belong to the Nationalist, or Kuomintang (KMT), party, which has long espoused deepening ties with China.
A Chinese official on Saturday night urged people in Taiwan to protect those gains. “This is a very strong message, not only to the KMT administration, but also to Beijing,” said Hsu Szu-chien, a Chinese politics expert at the Taipei-based research institution Academia Sinica.
“We hope compatriots across the Strait will cherish hard-won fruits of cross-strait relations, and jointly safeguard and continue to push forward peaceful development of cross-strait relations,” said Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for the state council Taiwan affairs office. “The Ma administration depends totally on China’s goodwill — that’s his only strategy for Taiwan’s economic development. And he’s done this by paying the price of sacrificing Taiwan’s democracy.”
Taiwanese watched closely as Beijing took a hardline stance on demands for democratic rule in Hong Kong, the semiautonomous Chinese city gripped by more two months of pro-democracy protests. Taiwan’s distrust of China “is at its highest in recent years”, he said, in the wake of Beijing’s hardline response to the pro-democracy “Umbrella Movement” that continues to paralyse swaths of Hong Kong.
The heavy losses will make it tougher for Ma’s Nationalists to hold onto the presidency in 2016. Ko Wen-je, a 55 year-old emergency doctor who is backed by Taiwan’s opposition Democratic Progressive party, will become the city’s first non-KMT mayor in 16 years. According to Taipei’s central elections commission, he took 57.1% of the vote, while KMT candidate Sean Lien, a financier and the son of a former KMT vice-president, took 40.8%.
“I must express apologies to the Nationalist party and its supporters for making everyone disappointed,” Ma told a news conference. “I’ve received the message people have sent via these elections. It’s my responsibility and I will quickly offer a party reform plan to address everyone’s demands. I won’t avoid responsibility.” “The walls of ideology are about to fall,” Ko said in his victory speech, according to Bloomberg. “This is the time for the people to rule.”
The chief opposition Democratic Progressive party picked up seven offices in Saturday’s elections. It favors continuing talks with China’s Communist leadership, but disputes the dialogue framework that binds the two sides under Beijing’s jurisdiction, instead preferring talks in an international setting. The relationship between the two men — Ko outspoken and unconventional, Lien more conservative and cautious — has been punctuated by dramatic twists. In November 2010, Lien was shot in the head while stumping for a KMT candidate at a Taipei rally, and Ko led a team of surgeons which helped to save his life. Ko did not conduct the surgery himself. The gunman, a gang member, is currently serving a life sentence.
“We want to send the Nationalists a warning,” said Lin Wen-chih, a 48-year-old film producer who voted for the winning independent Taipei mayoral candidate, Ko Wen-je. “Taiwan is an independent country. We don’t want the Nationalists to take measures that would have it eaten up (by China).” Saturday’s elections were the biggest in Taiwan’s history — about 18 million people were registered to vote, and 20,000 candidates competed for an unprecedented 11,130 local seats. The KMT won in six of the island’s major cities and counties, far fewer than expected — four years ago, during the island’s last local elections, the party won 15.
A weakened Nationalist party, also known as the Kuomintang, or KMT, may erode Ma’s mandate before 2016 to sign a pact with China to cut import tariffs, set up official representative offices on both sides and push for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. If the opposition party wins the presidency, Beijing is likely to suspend deals with Taiwan. The KMT’s loss of Taipei and the large central city Taicheng bode poorly for current president Ma Ying-jeou as he enters the late phase of his second and final four-year term, and for the KMT as a whole in advance of presidential elections in 2016.
In March, Ma’s government faced thousands of student-led protesters who occupied parliament and nearby streets in Taipei to stop ratification of a service trade liberalization agreement with China. Beijing has considered the island a breakaway province since a bitter civil war drove them apart more than 60 years ago. Yet cross-strait ties have improved significantly since Ma took power in 2008 — the president has signed 21 trade deals with China, the island’s largest trading partner, and expressed hopes of eventually meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping.
Ma faces criticisms at home over his perceived coziness with mainland officials, stagnating wages, and a string of food safety scandals involving tainted cooking oil. In March, tens of thousands of protesters occupied the island’s legislature and surrounding streets to protest his handling of a cross-strait trade pact, ultimately blocking its ratification.
“I must express apologies to the Nationalist party and its supporters for making everyone disappointed,” Ma told reporters after the results were announced, according to the Associated Press. “I’ve received the message people have sent via these elections. It’s my responsibility and I will quickly offer a party reform plan to address everyone’s demands. I won’t avoid responsibility.”
Chinese state media reported on the election results while glossing over the rise in anti-mainland sentiment that they represent. “We hope compatriots across the Strait will cherish hard-won fruits of cross-strait relations, and jointly safeguard and continue to push forward peaceful development of cross-strait relations,” said Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, according to the state newswire Xinhua.