Taipei’s Mayoral Race Is a Barometer for China

In the animated street argot of this capital city, they’re calling the election race “steamed bun versus pizza,” “street cur versus pedigree pup,” “native Taiwanese versus foreign-born Chinese.”

One candidate was born to illiterate parents, scrapped his way through law school and battled in the courts against the former martial law regime here. He is short, bespectacled and looks like the guy next door.

The other was raised in the bosom of the Taiwan ruling elite, sent to the United States for polishing at Harvard Law and served at the highest levels of national government. He is tall, fit and looks like a movie star.

Today’s election, which polls show to be very close, is for mayor of this city of nearly 3 million people. However, the importance of the vote stretches far beyond Taipei.

The Communist regime in Beijing, which considers Taiwan a renegade province, is looking at the vote as an indication of the strength of pro-independence political movements here.

If China perceives a rise in support for independence, its reactions could draw a response from the United States. That happened in March 1996, when China tried to intimidate the island with military exercises and a series of missile tests close to Taiwan ports. Tension was high until the United States intervened by sending two carrier battle groups to the area.

Although this summer President Clinton emphasized that the U.S. does not support independence for Taiwan, the 1996 events also showed that it will react if China threatened Taiwan with force.

Foreign governments, represented by trade offices here, are also viewing today’s vote as a sneak preview of the next generation of Taiwan politicians.

And the ruling Nationalist Party is hoping that a strong showing by its candidate will breathe new life in the century-old party that was founded on the Chinese mainland.

The week leading up to the vote has been a frenzy of giant rallies, campaign motorcades and sidewalk fireworks shows. The entire city is festooned with campaign banners, flags and posters of smiling candidates holding up their clasped hands in obsequious appeals to the voters.

No matter who wins the mayor’s race--incumbent Democratic Progressive Party candidate Chen Shui-bian, 47, or telegenic Nationalist Party candidate Ma Ying-jeou, 48--both men have a future in Taiwanese politics. The third candidate, New Party nominee Wang Chien-shien, 60, could be a spoiler but is not expected to win more than 10% of the vote.

The mayoral race is getting attention because it could be a precursor of the presidential election in 2000. Because Chen is a Taiwanese-speaking native whose ancestors came here several hundred years ago from China, and Ma is a Mandarin-speaking son of parents who came here after World War II, the election will also test the depths of “mainlander”-versus-Taiwanese enmity here.

Win or lose, Chen is the front-runner to be the Democratic Progressive candidate for president in 2000, when the term of incumbent President Lee Teng-hui expires.

Although he has moderated his stance in recent years, Chen began his political career as a militant opponent to reunification with the mainland. Beijing, which fears the Taiwan independence movement, has sent a team of scholars to observe the election.

Ma, who made some enemies in the ruling party as a graft-busting justice minister before resigning last year, is the best young hope for the creaking old Nationalist Party, known as the Kuomintang, or KMT. Just by making the race close in a city where Chen holds a 70% approval rating, Ma has already won big points with the party leadership and redeemed any intraparty sins he committed as justice minister.

Ma, who says he still favors eventual reunification with the mainland, is therefore much more palatable to the Beijing regime.

In the last days of the campaign, the volatile issue of Taiwanese ethnicity has come to the fore. This is the historic and linguistic divide between the majority Taiwanese-speaking population, whose ancestors migrated here several hundred years ago, and the Mandarin-speaking minority, who were part of the Nationalist forces who fled the mainland after their defeat by the Communists in 1949.

About 80% of the island’s people are descendants of the population that existed here before World War II. Most of the rest, including mayoral candidate Ma, who was born in Hong Kong, are considered “mainlanders.” Because the mainland Nationalists ruled here for decades with an iron hand, including the forced instruction of the Mandarin dialect, there is great residual enmity between the two groups.

When Chen describes himself as baozi--a homemade steamed bun--and his opponent as pizza--an imported food--he is really talking in not-so-subtle code about Taiwanese and mainlanders. Same for “local dog” and “imported breed.”

Outraged over the ethnic barbs, Ma describes himself as the candidate of “integration.”

“There is no reason,” he said at a news conference this week, “that we should be excluded from the title ‘Taiwanese.’ ”

To overcome the ethnic issue, Ma has had to call on his main weapon in this matter: President Lee. Although Lee is the leader of the Nationalists, he is also a native Taiwanese. Because of this, he enjoys broad cross-party support.

At a rally in Taipei this week, Ma, who speaks Taiwanese only haltingly, was joined on the podium by the president. Speaking the Taiwanese dialect, Lee urged the crowd to view Ma as a capable leader and a “new Taiwanese.”

“We are all new Taiwanese, whether our ancestors came here 400 or 500 years ago, or 40 or 50 years ago,” Lee told the crowd.

There are other elections on tap today, including a wild mayor’s race in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second-biggest city, and island-wide votes to elect the 225 members in the expanded national parliament.

But most eyes--including those in Beijing--will be focused on the Taipei contest.

On one level, the race will be viewed as a vote of confidence in the Democratic Progressive management of Taipei, the first significant territory to come under the party’s control.

Since his 1994 election, the energetic Chen has set out to clean up the city, reduce its horrendous traffic and make the city government more responsive to the citizens.

At another level, the election will be a test to see if the Nationalist Party, given the right candidate, can recover some of the power and dynamism that has been steadily slipping away.

Another possible outcome of the vote is that Lee, 74, who has said he will quit after his term expires, may reconsider.

Tien Hung-mao, an advisor to the president, said recently that it “is premature to rule out another term” for Lee.

Rone Tempest is The Times’ Hong Kong bureau chief.