Taiwan’s Presidential Election
What’s at Stake A Test for the Ruling Party Taiwan’s Election Rallies An Important Constituency Taiwanese Americans on the Vote
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news analysis
China Failed to Sway Taiwan’s Election. What Happens Now?
Beijing loathes the new president, Lai Ching-te. He aims to protect the status quo with caution and American help, but tensions are likely to rise.
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Supporters of Lai Ching-te in Taipei after his win on Saturday, a third successive victory for the Democratic Progressive Party. Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
By Damien Cave
Reporting from Taipei, Taiwan
Jan. 13, 2024Updated 11:02 a.m. ET
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China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has tied his country’s great power status to a singular promise: unifying the motherland with Taiwan, which the Chinese Communist Party sees as sacred, lost territory. A few weeks ago, Mr. Xi called this a “historical inevitability.”
But Taiwan’s election on Saturday, handing the presidency to a party that promotes the island’s separate identity for the third time in a row, confirmed that this boisterous democracy has moved even further away from China and its dream of unification.
After a campaign of festival-like rallies, where huge crowds shouted, danced and waved matching flags, Taiwan’s voters ignored China’s warnings that a vote for the Democratic Progressive Party was a vote for war. They made that choice anyway.
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Damien Cave is an international correspondent for The Times, covering the Indo-Pacific region. He is based in Sydney, Australia. More about Damien Cave
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