Taiwan voters on Saturday elected independence-leaning Lai Ching-te as president, handing an unprecedented third consecutive term to the Democratic Progressive Party, which Beijing strongly opposes.
China, which split with Taiwan at the end of a civil war in 1949, regards the island as a renegade province that must eventually be reunified, by force if necessary.
In the days leading up to the vote, China demanded voters reject Lai's "evil path" and make the "right choice", while raising the spectre of war if the DPP retained power.
The rhetoric was backed by China continuing its near-daily military presence around Taiwan. Over the past 18 months, China has also held two rounds of large-scale war games in which it sent warplanes and ships to encircle the island.
After Lai's win, Taiwan told China to "face reality".
But China's campaign of intimidation, which has become widely regarded as one of Xi's signature policies, is likely to grow, according to analysts.
"We can expect Beijing to ratchet up tension and coercion against Taipei," Lyle Morris, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told AFP.
"The era of two political parties on both sides of the strait... hashing out some kind of political consensus on unification is slipping away and Beijing knows it."
- No compromise -
China's official reactions immediately after the vote, while relatively muted, also signalled no room for compromise.
"Whatever changes take place in Taiwan, the basic fact that there is only one China in the world and Taiwan is part of China will not change," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
On state-controlled media, some commentary was far more strident.
Influential Chinese nationalist political commentator Hu Xijin wrote that the choices of Taiwan's voters were irrelevant.
"Strength and the existence of the option to use force are the prerequisites for peaceful unification," he wrote on social media site Weibo.
"In his first speech after winning the election, Lai didn't dare to sound as brash as he had previously -- isn't that because of fear?"
- Pressure campaign -
China must contend with the fact that its threats may even have pushed voters into the hands of the "separatist" forces it is set against.
China's leaders have seen a similar dynamic before.
In 1996, Beijing launched a series of missile tests near the island in a failed bid to stop voters from electing independence-leaning Lee Teng-hui.
Xi and his officials could take heart from the fact that many in Taiwan saw a vote for Lai as a vote for continuity -- and not for full independence, one expert said.
"Taiwan's voters demonstrated their preference for preserving the status quo, not for shifting the terms of relations across the Taiwan Strait," Ryan Hass, a former US diplomat and a China scholar at the Brookings Institution, told AFP.
"China's leaders understand this," he said. "While Beijing does not celebrate the status quo, there are no indications that it will soon launch conflict to alter it."
The clock is ticking: CIA director William Burns said last year that President Xi Jinping had ordered his military to be ready to carry out a successful invasion of the island by 2027.
That "timetable remains the same", Hong Kong-based Chinese politics expert Willy Lam told AFP.
"The key factor is the Xi leadership's perception of the gap between (his) forces on the one hand, and those of the US and its Asian allies such as Japan on the other."
On Pingtan island -- China's closest point to Taiwan's main island this week -- one local told AFP that he felt unification was closer than ever.
"Hong Kong has returned, Macau has returned, it's just Taiwan," Chen Suqing, a 75-year-old retired businessman, said.
"We must liberate Taiwan in this generation," he said.
"If Taiwan is not unified and becomes independent, we will fight."
Taiwan tells China to 'face reality' after election
Taipei (AFP) Jan 14, 2024 -
Taiwan on Sunday told China to "face reality" and respect its election result, after voters defied Beijing's warnings and chose pro-sovereignty candidate Lai Ching-te as president.
Voters spurned Beijing's repeated calls not to vote for Lai, delivering a comfortable victory for a man China's ruling Communist Party sees as a dangerous separatist.
Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its territory and has never renounced force to bring it under its control, responded to Lai's victory saying it would not change the "inevitable trend of China's reunification".
Lai, of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), vowed to defend the island from China's "intimidation" and on Sunday the island's foreign ministry told Beijing to accept the result.
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls on the Beijing authorities to respect the election results, face reality and give up suppressing Taiwan in order for positive cross-strait interactions to return to the right track," it said in a statement.
After a campaign marked by diplomatic pressure from Beijing and near-daily incursions by Chinese fighter jets, Lai beat his nearest rival Hou Yu-ih of the Kuomintang (KMT) on Saturday by more than 900,000 votes.
In his victory speech the 64-year-old Lai congratulated voters for refusing to be swayed by "external forces" trying to influence the election.
He said he wanted to cooperate with China -- Taiwan's biggest trade partner -- and maintain peace and stability, but pledged not to be cowed by Chinese belligerence.
"We are determined to safeguard Taiwan from continuing threats and intimidation from China," he told supporters.
Four Chinese naval vessels were seen in waters around the island on polling day, according to Taiwan's defence ministry, and one high-altitude balloon passed over.
In the days leading up the election, China warned Taiwan's voters to make the "correct choice", and that Lai would take the island closer to war.
Lai will take power on May 20 alongside his vice-presidential pick Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan's former representative to the United States.
Both Lai and Hsiao were the targets of disinformation efforts during the campaign that experts linked to China.
Turnout of 72 percent showed an enthusiastic electorate, and on Sunday, voter Tsai Jin-hui said Beijing should mind its own business.
"What China thinks is a matter for China. We are electing the president of our own country," the 62-year-old taxi driver told AFP.
"I believe one day the world will recognise Taiwan as an independent sovereign state."
The United States and Britain congratulated Lai on his win, while the EU welcomed the successful holding of the election.
- Continuity -
World powers are keen to see as much stability as possible between China and Taiwan, not least because of the vital role the island plays in the global economy.
The Taiwan Strait is one of the world's most important maritime trade arteries, and the island itself is a major tech manufacturer, particularly of vital semiconductors -- the tiny chips used in everything from smartphones to missile systems.
Lai and the DPP have toned down past calls for independence, saying there is no need for a formal declaration since Taiwan is effectively independent already, defending the island's sovereignty.
But China still sees them as skirting too close to the "I-word" -- a red line for the communist giant.
Beijing cut off official contact with current President Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP in 2016 and is not expected to budge with Lai, setting the stage for four more years of frosty cross-strait relations.
"The ruling party's unprecedented third consecutive presidential victory will disappoint China, but it is unlikely to spur any near-term change in Beijing's reunification strategy," Bonnie Glaser, a Taiwan-China affairs expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, wrote in an analysis piece.
But the question in the coming days will be whether China decides on merely a diplomatic and rhetorical response to the election -- or steps up with a big show of force.
A possible flashpoint will be the planned visit by an unofficial US delegation, announced by a senior official in President Joe Biden's administration for the days after the election.
In line with most countries, Washington does not formally recognise Taiwan but maintains close unofficial ties -- and is the island's main arms supplier.
A visit to Taiwan by then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2022 sent Beijing into a fury, triggering China's biggest ever military exercises around the island, involving warships, missiles and fighter jets
Further ahead, Lai's presidency could be affected by the US election in November, with the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House offering a very different prospect than Biden.
bur-pdw/dhc/kma
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