China Achieves More by Doing Less in Elections

China’s leadership is 2-for-2 over the last six months at “winning” elections in which it isn’t a candidate.

In Taiwan, for the first time in years, voters didn’t disappoint the mainland, delivering a defeat to pro-independence President Chen Shui-bian in legislative elections last week. Three months ago, voters in Hong Kong also delivered a setback to the pro-democracy camp. After two years of democracy marches, broad calls for universal suffrage and growing support for pro-democracy candidates, the tide seemed to reverse as Beijing’s allies did far better than expected.

A postelection look at Beijing’s action -- or, more accurately, lack of it -- in the two campaigns suggests that China is becoming more nuanced at the democratic game than in elections past. Although it has hardly lost its appetite for throwing its weight around, it’s also learned to dance a little better.

Beijing waited until Wednesday, four days after the election, to criticize Chen’s campaign rhetoric. And then it did so in a relatively restrained way compared with its bitter denunciations in past Taiwanese elections and its intimidating missile tests before the 1996 presidential contest. China views Taiwan as part of its territory and is extremely suspicious of any moves toward independence.

Likewise, leading up to Hong Kong’s September legislative elections, Beijing used a combination of carrots and sticks that was more subtle and effective than in the past.

It paraded a host of luminaries through Hong Kong to engender patriotism and closer ties with the mainland, including visits by Olympic stars, astronauts and People’s Liberation Army honor guards. And it opened the economic taps by loosening rules on mainland tourists and expanding economic integration with neighboring Chinese provinces.

“They’re getting a better sense how the election game is played,” said Michael DeGolyer, a political scientist with Hong Kong Baptist University and head of a multiyear project monitoring democracy in the former British colony. “They’re focusing on playing the game rather than just giving orders.”

Those looking for clues to the shifting power balance across the Taiwan Strait after the latest election need look no further than the signals coming out of Beijing and Taipei over the last few days.

In breaking China’s official silence Wednesday, Li Weiyi, a spokesman at Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, criticized several of Chen’s core election themes. His assured presentation for the cameras came less than 24 hours after Chen’s mea culpa in Taipei in which he stepped down as chairman of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, took responsibility for the poor showing and admitted to several election-related mistakes.

Members of his pro-independence camp, known as the pan-greens, have been busy licking their wounds and figuring out their next move, evidenced by several canceled speeches in which Chen and key allies had presumably hoped to trumpet their victory.

Democrats in Hong Kong, meanwhile, find themselves in a similar mode after their September setback. The head of Hong Kong’s main opposition Democratic Party, Yeung Sum, recently stepped down to take responsibility for its poor showing.

Others are trying to unify the democracy movement and find new themes in order to regain momentum lost when China in effect blocked their calls for universal suffrage by 2007 and 2008.

Most analysts doubt that China has changed its fundamental outlook toward democracy. On the contrary, it’s been the first to say it reserves the right to do whatever it takes if things go beyond what it considers acceptable. That includes independence in Taiwan and outright opposition to Beijing’s policies in Hong Kong.

Nor is it clear to what extent Beijing’s more nuanced approach is ultimately responsible for the recent legislative outcomes in Taiwan and Hong Kong, or whether the movements hit a wall of their own accord due to infighting, voters’ desire for greater political balance and technical factors associated with the complex voting systems in both jurisdictions.

Furthermore, although Beijing’s adversaries in Taiwan and Hong Kong may be down, they are far from knocked out. “It doesn’t mean they’ve turned the tables,” said Liu Kin-ming, editorial page editor at Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper.

Although arrogance got the better of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy legislators and Taiwan’s pan-green camp in the most recent elections, both movements have grass-roots appeal that over time could strengthen their popularity.

And both camps actually scored modest gains. It’s only when they are judged according to their inflated expectations that they failed.

Taiwan’s ruling DPP, for instance, picked up two seats in Saturday’s election, and pro-democracy forces picked up one in Hong Kong in September.

Furthermore, electoral reforms in both locations will increase the number of directly elected seats, arguably favoring those with better campaigning skills and a more populist message.

In attacking its political adversaries in Taiwan and Hong Kong, Beijing has frequently targeted a handful of “splittist” leaders it accuses of leading the people blindly toward instability.

“Chen’s ambition and energy can never be underestimated,” said Zhu Weidong, a Taiwan expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. “If a way within the system is blocked, chances are he’ll try to find a way outside.”

Far more worrisome over the long term for Beijing, however, are increasingly independent electorates in both places who compel their leaders to follow them, whether toward a stronger Taiwanese identity or greater Hong Kong electoral rights.

Beijing is also grappling with the prospect that this trend is not confined to Taiwan and Hong Kong but increasingly evident on the mainland, directly threatening the power of the Communist Party.

China has argued that the Middle Kingdom is not yet ready for democracy, given the nation’s low education levels and lack of maturity. Yet it has allowed polling at the village level, presumably among the least educated parts of China. And it continues to resist full elections in Hong Kong, presumably among China’s best educated, most cosmopolitan areas.

For the time being, Beijing has gained a bit of breathing room. And for that, it can thank the judgment of the very voters it has often been distrustful of.

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Yin Lijin of The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.