Ties With China Dominate as Taiwan Heads to Polls

President Chen Shui-bian bounded onto the stage Friday evening to the roar of the crowd assembled at Shihpai High School, his last stop before Taiwanese elections today.

“Let’s rewrite history together,” he said to the cheers of flag-waving supporters. “Let’s use our ballots to end the chaos in the legislature.”

The 53-year-old master campaigner, who narrowly won a second term this spring, now hopes to lead his coalition to its first absolute majority in legislative balloting. If he succeeds, he’ll be in a position to break a logjam in congress, push through his independence-oriented agenda and secure his legacy.

Many of the items on that agenda, however, are almost sure to roil China and undermine relations with Washington. These include amending Taiwan’s half-century-old constitution, replacing its official name, Republic of China, with Taiwan, and pushing for entry into the United Nations, World Health Organization and other global bodies.

China views Taiwan as part of its territory and has vowed to attack if it declares independence. Beijing is particularly distrustful of Chen.

As the confetti flew Friday night, however, reactions from Beijing and Washington were not a major concern. Getting the vote out came first for Chen, who was banking on his ability to repair campaign-related collateral damage after the election.

A lawyer by training, Chen argues that a strong showing for his ruling Democratic Progressive Party and its allies today could improve relations with China. With a legislative majority, he says, the mainland won’t be able to ignore him any longer and will finally come to the bargaining table.

“Don’t let us down,” he told the crowd, his voice hoarse from campaigning. “Please give us the majority.”

Across town, opposition leader Lien Chan, head of the Nationalist Party, which is known for its more accommodating stance toward Beijing, wrapped up his stumping as a local pop group warmed up the crowd with tunes such as “Shake Your Bon-Bon” and “Livin’ La Vida Loca.” The opposition, seeking to hold on to its slim 51% majority, has framed the vote as a choice between Chen’s road to war and economic ruin and its path to peace and prosperity.

This may sound dramatic, but it’s not particularly original, echoing themes that have been raised for years. Chen and his allies have run campaign circles around the Lien camp by brushing aside its scare tactics and keeping the focus away from the lackluster economy.

Even as Lien’s party has relied on traditional machine politics befitting a group that enjoyed a half-century monopoly on power, Chen’s DPP has been masterful at getting the right votes in the right places to maximize seats under Taiwan’s complex proportional representation system.

Most analysts expect Chen and his allies, who currently hold 100 of the 225 seats in the legislature, to pick up an additional 10 to 15 seats and the Nationalist camp, which now holds 115 seats, to lose 10 to 20, with the rest going to independents.

China has remained relatively quiet through this election, a contrast to its history of issuing threats and even conducting missile exercises near Taiwan.

“Beijing has been very cool this time,” said Lo Chih-cheng, executive director of the Institute for National Policy Research in Taipei. “It’s not that they necessarily understand democracy better. But they realize their actions are counterproductive.”

That’s not to say China isn’t watching with keen interest. Beijing fears a big victory for the Chen camp, known collectively as the pan-green, will prompt the president to argue that he has a mandate to aggressively pursue pro-independence policies.

“If the green camp wins,” said Li Jiaquan, a retired Taiwan expert formerly with Beijing’s Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, “the consequence would be described in three words: chaos, chaos, chaos.”

The Taiwanese have lived for decades in China’s threatening shadow, and many see little risk of Beijing mounting an attack before it stages the Olympics in 2008.

“I don’t like Chen’s pro-independence views, but I don’t think it will lead to war,” said Stanley Chen, a 32-year-old employee at a computer company who planned to vote for the Nationalist Party camp.

Of greater concern to many Taiwanese are strains in relations with the U.S. and a perception that Washington is growing closer to Beijing.

Analysts say Taiwan needs U.S. support to counter China’s increasing diplomatic and economic clout, particularly with the European Union expected to lift its ban next year on military sales to Beijing. Taiwan is expected to vote next year on whether to buy an $18-billion package of U.S. weaponry.

But Chen is battling a reputation in some Washington circles as a loose cannon whose fiery rhetoric could stir instability at a time when the U.S. already has its hands full with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East and North Korea. This week a State Department spokesman, in a mild diplomatic rebuke, said the U.S. was “not supportive” of a Chen proposal to change the names of foreign offices and state firms to Taiwan from China.

“Right now, Chen can’t show weakness,” said Wu Yu-shan, political science director of Academia Sinica, one of Taiwan’s foremost academic institutions. “But he’ll go begging for America’s forgiveness after the election.”

The election also has implications for Taiwan’s political structure. Chen has vowed to reduce the number of elections and the complexity of the voting system, and he has plans to revamp the constitution, a proposal that worries Washington and Beijing, which view any change in the status quo as dangerous.

Analysts said that if the Nationalists suffer a drubbing, it could throw the party into further disarray. But it could prompt an overhaul of the party’s aging leadership, and open the way for younger leaders and a more vibrant opposition.

If neither side gets a clear majority, the independents will gain enormous leverage as both sides would have to compete for their support to pass legislation.

During March’s presidential election, Chen and Vice President Annette Lu were lightly injured in a shooting that still has not been solved.

On Thursday, the TVBS cable station received a letter that claimed four bombs were placed at the station and at the downtown skyscraper Taipei 101, which recently upstaged Malaysia’s Petronas Towers to become the world’s tallest building.

As Chen wrapped up his campaign Friday after a day at local temples honoring farming and the sea goddess, he expressed hope for a peaceful election.

“They told us to give up independence or they would attack,” he said to the strains of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. “This is a democracy. We can discuss and debate, but there’s no place for violence or bombs.”

Special correspondent Tsai Ting-I in Taipei and Yin Lijin in The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.