Tag: Lai Ching-te

China’s Dispute With Taiwan Is Playing Out Near This Tiny Island

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A small island controlled by Taiwan a few miles off China’s coast lived for decades in constant readiness for war. At one point in 1958, troops there hunkered in bunkers as Communist forces rained hundreds of thousands of shells on them. These days, the island, Kinmen, has become a hub of Taiwan’s commerce with China and its abandoned, weatherworn fortifications are tourist sites. Eight ferries a day take Taiwanese businesspeople and visitors from Kinmen to mainland China. But the sea around Kinmen has again turned tense after two Chinese men…

Delegation Led by Mike Gallagher Says U.S. Support for Taiwan Is Firm

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Visiting U.S. lawmakers sought to assure Taiwan on Thursday that the United States would stand by it in the face of pressure from China, though a bill that includes support for the island has stalled in Congress, and divisions over aid for Ukraine have fanned wider questions about Washington’s commitment to its partners. “Today we’ve come as Democrats and Republicans to show bipartisan support for this partnership,” Representative Mike Gallagher, the Wisconsin Republican who is leading the congressional delegation to Taiwan, told President Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei, the capital. Journalists…

Taiwan Loses Ally Nauru After Electing President Beijing Loathes

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Just two days after Taiwan elected as its next leader Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing sees as a staunch separatist, it lost a diplomatic ally in its rivalry with China. Nauru, a tiny freckle of land in the Pacific Ocean, announced that it would be severing diplomatic relations with Taiwan, effective immediately. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it welcomed the decision by Nauru and is ready to establish relations with it. Taiwan’s foreign ministry indicated that it had no doubt that Beijing had orchestrated the Pacific island’s shift, stating…

Why Taiwan’s Election Matters to the World

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Taiwan’s election on Saturday has big implications not only for the 23 million people who live on the island, but also for China’s superpower rivalry with the United States. Voters chose as their next president Lai Ching-te, the current vice president, who has vowed to continue his party’s policy of protecting the island’s sovereignty. The vote is a rebuke to Beijing’s claim over Taiwan and the growing pressure it has been exerting on the island democracy. As in all major Taiwanese elections, how to deal with China was a central…

In Taiwan, Voters Choose President as China Tensions Loom

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The Taiwanese politician Lai Ching-te has for years been reviled by China’s Communist Party as a dangerous foe who, by its account, could drag the two sides into a war by pressing for full independence for his island democracy. Right up to Saturday, when millions of Taiwanese voted for their next president, an official Beijing news outlet warned that Mr. Lai could take Taiwan “on a path of no return.” Yet, despite China’s months of menacing warnings of a “war or peace” choice for Taiwan’s voters, Mr. Lai was elected…

China Failed to Sway Taiwan’s Election. What Happens Now?

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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…

Taiwan Party, Reviled by China, Faces Test of its Staying Power

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Nearly four decades ago, a group of lawyers, intellectuals and activists assembled in a hotel ballroom in Taipei to found an illegal political party dedicated to ending authoritarian rule in Taiwan. No longer a scrappy upstart, the Democratic Progressive Party, born in that ballroom, is now seeking an unprecedented third consecutive term. It needs to persuade voters that after eight years in power, the party can renew itself while also protecting Taiwan from mounting pressures imposed by Beijing, which claims the island as its territory. Led by Vice President Lai…