Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen said on Saturday that her mission in life was to ensure the island continued to belong to its people and that Taiwan’s existence was not a provocation to anyone, in a fiery rebuttal to China’s pre-election bid.
Local elections in Taiwan on November 26 come a month after Chinese President Xi Jinping, who stepped up military pressure on the democratically-ruled island to accept Beijing’s sovereignty, secured an unprecedented third term in office.
While the mayoral and councilor vote is nominally about domestic issues, Tsai told thousands of cheering supporters at a rally in downtown Taipei that much more was at stake, the first time she has so explicitly gone after China in this campaign.
Tsai said she had “not given up” on Xi’s “one country, two systems” proposal for autonomy under Chinese sovereignty, and that under her leadership more and more countries see Taiwan’s democracy and security as the key to peace.
“I want to tell everyone that the existence of Taiwan and the Taiwanese people’s insistence on freedom and democracy is not a provocation to anyone,” she told a rally for her ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
“As president, it is my job to make every effort to ensure that Taiwan is still the Taiwan of the Taiwanese people.”
China held war games near Taiwan in August after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei and has since continued military activities nearby, including near-daily crossings of the sensitive middle line in the narrow Taiwan Strait.
US President Joe Biden will meet with Xi Jinping next week, with Taiwan on the agenda, according to the White House.
ELECTION TEST OF PARTY SUPPORT
While Tsai and the DPP swept the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections, the main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) made significant gains in the last local elections in 2018.
The poll in two weeks will be a test for both parties ahead of Taiwan’s next presidential and parliamentary polls in early 2024.
The KMT, which ruled China before fleeing to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, has traditionally favored close relations with Beijing, which has left it open to DPP attacks and will sell the island to the Chinese Communist Party.
The KMT denies this, but could not shake off the allegations before the 2020 elections, leading to a DPP landslide.
Its chairman Eric Chu told a KMT election rally in neighboring New Taipei on Saturday that their mission is to protect freedom and democracy in Taiwan.
“The most important goal is that everyone can have a peaceful and stable future,” he said.