The Economist UK - 27.07.2019

The EconomistJuly 27th 2019 45

1

F

ollowing a dismalwinter you can’t

count on a good summer, yet Tsai Ing-

wen is making hay. Early in the year, Tai-

wan’s president had appeared mired in

gloom. Ordinary Taiwanese were disillu-

sioned with her stewardship of the econ-

omy. Her Democratic Progressive Party

(dpp) had fared so badly in municipal elec-

tions that she felt compelled to step down

as party leader. To compound it all, Xi Jinp-

ing, China’s ruler, had made it clear that

China, which claims Taiwan as its own and

which has ostracised Ms Tsai and her inde-

pendence-leaning party, was in no mind to

make life easier for her or for Taiwan.

What a difference a few months make.

First, Ms Tsai emerged surprisingly strong-

ly from a primary contest in which she beat

off William Lai Ching-te, the former mayor

of Tainan, who challenged her to be the dpp

candidate to contest the next presidential

election. The primary, curiously, is decided

by taking opinion polls of voters. Some ex-

perts suspect Ms Tsai’s camp of massaging

the outcome. But there is no doubt that Ms

Tsai’s firm support for pro-democracy prot-

ests currently roiling Hong Kong (see Chi-

na section) boosted her standing at home.

She has since welcomed several dozen

Hong Kong protesters who reportedly in-

tend to seek political asylum in Taiwan. By

contrast, the protests have thrown the op-

position Kuomintang (kmt), which is con-

ciliatory towards China, off balance.

With a fair wind at her back, Ms Tsai

breezed off to America on July 11th. Her

two-day stay in New York, complete with a

ferry ride near the Statue of Liberty, was in-

tended to ooze normality, but visits by

presidents of Taiwan are unusual and

heavily circumscribed. The country has no

formal diplomatic relations with America,

along with the many other nations that ac-

knowledge the “one-China principle” in-

sisted upon in Beijing. Officially, Ms Tsai

was en route to a handful of diplomatic al-

lies in the Caribbean. But her stay was one

of the longest that America has granted to a

leader of the robustly democratic island.

China thundered in vain that America

should cancel her visit, during which she

met members of Congress and delivered a

speech at Columbia University in defence

of liberal, democratic values. “Taiwan is

not, and will not be, intimidated,” she said

at a reception in New York with representa-

tives of Taiwan’s 17 remaining diplomatic

allies. Her Caribbean visit was book-ended

by a further two days in Colorado.

It all signals an unusual degree of ap-

proval by champions of democracy in Con-

gress and by China hawks in Donald

Trump’s administration. They have seen

tensions with China rise over trade and

cyber-security. Taiwan, too, faces increas-

ing military and diplomatic pressure over

Ms Tsai’s refusal to accept that her island is

part of the Chinese motherland. A Chinese

defence white paper this week repeated

China’s threat of the use of force to prevent

Taiwan’s independence. Yet Ms Tsai has

been at pains not wantonly to rile China,

unhinge relations across the Taiwan Strait

and so risk dragging America into a danger-

ous conflict.

Marks of strengthening relations with

Taiwan have mostly been small yet sym-

bolic. On a previous transit in Houston, Ms

Tsai visited nasa, becoming the first Tai-

wanese leader to set foot in an American

federal agency since 1979, when America

broke off diplomatic relations in favour of

China. In May Mr Trump’s national securi-

ty adviser, John Bolton, met his Taiwanese

counterpart, David Lee, another first.

Taiwan’s president

Shine on

TAIPEI

Tsai Ing-wen’s prospects for re-election have improved

Asia

46 North-east Asia’s contested skies

47 Indian politics

47 Pakistan and America

48 Banyan: Japan’s identity

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