Op-Ed: Will Taiwanese voters choose closer ties with China over democratic freedoms? (via latimesopinion)
As Taiwanese voters prepare to go to the polls Saturday to elect their next president, they are choosing between two candidates who take fundamentally different positions on an issue whose implications go far beyond Taiwan: how to preserve a country’s democracy and freedom while maintaining economic relations with a neighboring giant that wants to subsume it.
As a high-income country, Taiwan is contending with the same challenges many wealthy countries are confronting, including wage stagnation, increasing inequality, asset inflation and aging demographics, accompanied by political polarization. In Taiwan’s case, these problems emerged as it became deeply integrated with the Chinese economy.
In trying to solve some of the problems of the high-income trap, President Tsai pushed through long-needed structural reforms on issues such as labor, pensions and energy. She also attempted to diversify Taiwan’s economic relationships. Taiwan estimates higher growth in 2019 than any other high-income Asian economy and enjoys the lowest unemployment since 2001. As for security, Tsai has increased the military budget and is importing more advanced weapons from the U.S.
At the same time, Tsai’s structural reforms were poorly designed and badly implemented, angering a broad range of interest groups. This led to the DPP’s stunning defeat in the local midterm elections of 2018, exemplified by Han’s own victory in the mayoral race in Kaohsiung, a traditionally DPP city. Han’s platform promises to improve relations with Beijing to bring in more capital, tourists and other economic benefits from China.
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