Taiwan’s presidential election: Pressure, pragmatism and pandas
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What China wants, China gets. Taking a very broad, big-picture view of Hegelian historical forces as they unfold, that may be one reading of the results of this past Saturday’s presidential election in Taiwan. Another may simply be that pragmatism won in a very big way. In any case, as the Sydney Morning Herald reports: “Beijing is ecstatic” that the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) candidate, Ma Ying-jeou, defeated the Democratic Progressive Party‘s Frank Hsieh by a margin of nearly 17 percent. Overall, the DPP had articulated a more pro-independence line that provoked the communist government in Beijing; it regards Taiwan as a renegade province and aims to someday bring it back into the fold of the motherland. Ma, however, expressed a more practical approach to relations with Taiwan’s powerful neighbor across the Taiwan Strait. Ma, a Harvard-trained lawyer, led a campaign that “advocated boosting the economy by increasing tourism, trade and investment with China, as well as reaching a formal peace accord” with the government on the mainland.
admin @ March 25, 2008