Taiwan President Wins Solid Victory

Defying weeks of Chinese military intimidation, Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui won a resounding victory Saturday in the first fully democratic presidential election ever held by a Chinese society.

The Taiwanese people voted “under threat” but “used their ballots to express their true love of this land,” Lee said in his victory speech Saturday night. “This is the most precious moment in our history.”

Even as China continued war games near Taiwan’s shores designed to dampen support for the territory’s sovereignty, voters handed incumbent President Lee 54% of the vote.

The second-place finish of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, with 21% underscored voters’ defiance of Beijing’s heavy-handed tactics, which had brought Taiwan to the brink of military conflict with the mainland and had cast an international spotlight on the vote.

Two parties that favored reunification with China were soundly defeated, taking 10% and 15% of the vote. Turnout was high, with 76% of the electorate flocking to the polls.

The outcome presents a crucial dilemma for Beijing: whether to ratchet up its intimidation campaign or seek reconciliation with Taiwan. China’s barrage of threats apparently succeeded in driving voters away from the DPP and into the arms of the government, which has repeatedly promised in recent days to reopen dialogue with Beijing and eventually seek reunification.

Maysing Yang, the head of foreign affairs for the second-place DPP, says the party lost up to 2 million voters to Lee because of Chinese pressure.

The party’s vice presidential candidate, Shih Ming-teh, resigned after the results were announced to take responsibility for the loss.

“Being able to choose our own leader is victory in itself,” Shih said. “It proves we are indeed an independent, sovereign state.”

The United States expressed satisfaction with the results.

“We congratulate the people of Taiwan on their first election,” a White House statement said. “They have made great strides in the past several years toward democracy.”

Secretary of State Warren Christopher said: “It is my hope that . . . there will be a lessening of tensions in the area and we will be able to return to a period in which the main emphasis should be on contacts and discussion between China and Taiwan.”

China and Taiwan have been divided since 1949, after a civil war in which Communists took over the mainland and Nationalists led by Gen. Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan and set up government.

Beijing said Saturday that Lee’s victory did not change Taiwan’s status as part of Chinese territory.

“Neither the changes in the way in which the Taiwan leaders are produced nor their result can change the fact that Taiwan is a part of China’s territory,” the official New China News Agency quoted a senior official of the government’s Taiwan Affairs Office as saying.

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China’s hard-line attitude merely stiffened Taiwanese resolve, said government spokesman Charles Wu.

“China has picked up a large rock only to drop it on its own feet,” said Wu, echoing one of Beijing’s favorite phrases. “Taiwanese people really hate those military threats and China’s emotional reactions.”

Lee, as vice president, assumed the presidency in 1988 upon the death of President Chiang Ching-kuo and was reelected by the National Assembly in 1990.

Throughout the recent saber-rattling, he and his Cabinet had maintained a guardedly defiant stance toward the mainland until election day.

Friends of Lee say that the fiery leader felt personally affronted by China’s military exercises so close to Taiwan’s shores, and that his decisive win may strengthen his resolve to be tough with Beijing.

But one of the first post-victory statements signaled a thaw in relations.

“How to ease cross-strait tensions and rebuild a good base for interaction between the two sides should be the main issue after the election,” Economics Minister Chiang Ping-kun said Saturday.

Although Lee made no mention of potential olive branches in his speech, ruling party officials said representatives of Taipei and Beijing are likely to meet soon to discuss direct air, postal and shipping links--if both sides can put aside their fundamental differences.

“As long as the military threats continue, there will be no dialogue,” Foreign Minister Fredrick Chien said.

Taiwan wants China to renounce any use of force to reunify the country, an option Beijing says it will never give up.

Beijing, in turn, wants Taiwan to reaffirm that it is part of China and to curtail its program of seeking world recognition, such as its bid to join the United Nations and quasi-diplomatic trips abroad by government officials. One such trip, Lee’s visit to Cornell University in New York last June, sparked Beijing’s fury and four rounds of muscle-flexing military exercises last year.

Given the stubbornness of both Beijing and Taipei, it may be up to the United States to help broker a post-election rapprochement, said an official from a nongovernmental organization that conducts indirect talks between Taiwan and China.

Nevertheless, since the United States pledged to protect peace between the two countries when it recognized mainland China in place of Taiwan in 1979, it has found itself in the middle of a diplomatic tangle.

Two U.S. aircraft carrier groups are now stationed off Taiwan’s shores in case China escalates its military exercises, which are scheduled to end Monday.

At the same time, officials in Washington are privately urging Lee not to further provoke China by accepting invitations to the U.S. that members of Congress might extend to congratulate Taiwan’s first directly elected president.

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The Clinton administration demonstrated its own displeasure with Beijing’s belligerence by canceling a visit by China’s defense minister scheduled for next month.

Even if the war games end, some analysts say Taiwan and China may be on the verge of more conventional brinkmanship that could escalate tensions.

“The U.S. is likely to find itself unwittingly dragged into it if Taiwan makes proposals that appear reasonable and Beijing rejects them,” said Ramon Myers, author of a forthcoming book on Taiwan, “The First Chinese Democracy.”

“It will make Beijing look like even more of a bully, and it will be difficult to restrain sympathy for Taiwan in Congress and around the world,” Myers said. “We’re all entering a very crucial period.”