IT WAS a landslide that will change Taiwanese politics and could affect China, too. Tsai Ing-wen, the presidential candidate of Taiwan’s independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), had been expected to win the presidential election held on January 16th. She had been leading the opinion polls for months. But the scale of her victory still came as a surprise. Ms Tsai won 56% of the vote, becoming the island’s first female leader. More striking still, in elections held on the same day to the parliament, called the Legislative Yuan, her party won 68 of the 113 seats up for grabs, compared with only 35 for the ruling Kuomintang (KMT; see graphic). It is the first time since Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan in 1949 that the KMT and its allies have lost their grip on parliament. It plunges relations with China into doubt: the mainland has not ruled out the use of force to retake the 23m-strong island should it ever declare independence.
A donnish former law professor who has toned down her party’s traditional support for such a declaration, Ms Tsai promised in her victory speech a stable and predictable relationship with China. But, she added, the DPP’s sweeping wins show Taiwan wants a government that is steadfast in protecting its sovereignty. She appealed to China’s Communist leaders, saying both nations should search for an acceptable way to interact “based on dignity and reciprocity”. “The values of democracy are already deeply in the blood of the people of Taiwan,” she said.
The outgoing president, Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT, who is constitutionally barred from running for a third term, has been the most China-friendly president in Taiwan’s history. During his eight-year rule, Mr Ma signed 23 cross-Strait pacts and even met with China’s president, Xi Jinping—the first-ever meeting of the two sides’ leaders. But Taiwanese voters have become wary about giving China too much influence over their island, which was one reason for the KMT’s defeat.
The other was the economy. The elections were mainly fought on bread-and-butter issues, such as stagnating salaries and skyrocketing housing prices. Mr Ma’s inability to use ties with China to revitalise the ailing economy, along with party infighting and a badly run campaign, explains the KMT’s worst-ever defeat. Its candidate, Eric Chu resigned as party chairman. The election showed Taiwan wants change; crowds of Ms Tsai’s supporters roared “New politics, new economy, a new Taiwan” during the vote count.
On the face of it, Ms Tsai is in a strong position to provide a new start. She has a big personal mandate and the DPP has an outright majority in the often-unruly parliament, which should give her an additional source of strength and stability. But she faces a lot of problems. A peculiarity of Taiwanese politics means she does not formally take over as president until May 20th. Mr Ma will be the lamest of ducks until then.
Ms Tsai will focus on improving Taiwan’s economy. A trade expert who helped negotiate Taiwan’s entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2002, she has ambitious plans to end economic over-reliance on China by boosting ties with the rest of Asia. The DPP wants Taiwan to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which does not include China. This would precipitate sweeping regulatory changes and, probably, fights with farmers over opening up to American pork imports. Ms Tsai, whose party is left-leaning, also aims to build cheap social housing and the like, which could also be controversial.
But the biggest doubts concern relations with China. Increasingly, Taiwanese people identify themselves as Taiwanese, rather than Chinese. This is especially true of young people who grew up after the KMT’s dictatorship ended in 1987. The tide turned against Mr Ma after students, calling themselves the Sunflower Movement, occupied parliament for over three weeks in 2014 to protest against a Chinese trade deal. The political party that grew out of the Sunflower Movement, the New Power Party, has won five seats and is now Taiwan’s third-largest political party; one of its lawmakers is Freddie Lim, a heavy metal singer with a rock group called Chthonic. It favours formal independence.
The youth vote was boosted by an extraordinary event on election day: a 16-year-old pop star, Chou Tzu-yu, posted a video apologising for waving the Taiwanese flag on a South Korean television program. She seems to have been forced to humiliate herself in this way by the South Korean managers of her band, who seem to have wanted to keep on the right side of China. The video, in which Ms Chou wears black and looks glum, went viral on polling day. Online commenters likened it to an ISIS propaganda video. It was roundly condemned by Mr Ma, Ms Tsai and Mr Chu. It may well have boosted the DPP’s vote. Taiwanese citizens, Ms Tsai said, had a perfect right to wave their own flag.
Ms Tsai has refused to endorse the so-called 1992 consensus between the KMT and the Chinese government. This says the two sides are loosely part of one China, but can interpret what that means in different ways. Mr Xi has long insisted that all Taiwanese leaders endorse the consensus. Hence the worries that Taiwan could again become a regional flashpoint, as it was the last time it elected a DPP president, in 2000-08.
In its state media, China downplayed the Taiwanese election, referring for example to the “presidential election” in quotation marks and ignoring the island’s political debates. That reflects China’s refusal to accept the island’s sovereignty—or, indeed, its democracy. But it also reflects Mr Xi’s own hard choices. He could impose economic penalties on Taiwan by, say, reducing the flow of Chinese tourists to the island. Or he could end the so-called diplomatic truce by which China does not attempt to poach the 22 countries that retain diplomatic ties with Taiwan. But if he imposes economic or diplomatic sanctions, Mr Xi risks losing the hearts and minds of Taiwanese people, which he has said he wants to win over.
At the same time, however, he needs to protect the image of China as a great power. “What Beijing does not want is the headline: ‘Business as usual’ if Taiwan chooses a pro-independence president,” says Alexander Huang of Tamkang University. China’s reaction to the election has been low-key and there have been few personal attacks on Ms Tsai so far. Mr Xi and Ms Tsai both seem to be playing a waiting game.