Taiwan goes to the polls under the watchful eye of China, but young voters want this election to be different

Taiwan will head to the polls this weekend, after a chaotic election campaign. (ABC News: Fletcher Yeung)

For the last few weeks, Taiwan has erupted into a festival of democracy.

At some rallies the music is upbeat with choreographed dance moves and song sheets — at others it’s orchestral and emotive, enough to compete with the crescendos of a Hollywood blockbuster.

The uniting theme is a pride for the self-governed island and a fierce desire to protect its democratic system, which in less than 30 years has developed into one of the most robust in Asia.

It’s certainly attention-grabbing — but no effort is needed to catch Beijing’s eye.

“China has been trying to influence Taiwan’s elections ever since Taiwan’s first presidential election in 1996,” says Wei-Ting Yen, a Taiwanese political scientist from Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania.

The current ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is vying for an unprecedented third term. It champions a distinct Taiwanese identity and since 2016, when President Tsai Ing-wen was elected, Beijing has cut off official contact.

Ms Tsai has served her maximum two terms and the vice-president, Lai Ching-te, hopes to succeed her.

Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), is led at this election by former police chief and current New Taipei Mayor Hou Yu-ih.

It too supports maintaining the status quo, but generally favours closer ties with China and is selling voters on the idea that if the KMT return to political office, Beijing will at least pick up the phone.

But a third party has successfully tapped into a growing desire, particularly among young people, for elections to be fought on more than just cross-strait relations.

Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) wants to be president too. That’s unlikely, but the party could end up holding a balance of power in the parliament, known as the Legislative Yuan.

That’s a situation that will be challenging to navigate, no matter who becomes president.

Young Taiwanese want change, while older voters demand stability

Despite several strict barriers to voting, Taiwan has an incredibly high turnout.

Voting is not compulsory. To cast your ballot you have to be in the electorate you’re enrolled in on election day. There’s no early, postal or absentee voting allowed.

This means every four years, many Taiwanese — especially young people yet to set down permanent roots — travel back to their home towns, some even returning from overseas to take part in the poll.

At the last election, 75 per cent of eligible voters cast their ballot, galvanised by Beijing’s brutal crackdown in Hong Kong.

Four years on, there are fears people are not as motivated to participate on election day — particularly young Taiwanese.

“They don’t want KMT, they don’t want DPP, they want something in the middle,” a young mother at a DPP rally in southern Taiwan says.

Wen-Ti Sung, from the Atlantic Council’s global China hub, says while Taiwan’s elections have traditionally been seen as a de facto referendum on China policy, this time is different.

“With three people in the race, [it] opens up a bit more room for discussion about other issues such as the economy, housing prices, and upward mobility challenges for Taiwan’s young people,” he said.

The TPP in particular has been targeting the younger vote, aligning itself as a party that represents “domestic level dissent”, according to Mr Sung.

“[Dissent] over governance issues, social and economic upward mobility challenges, and how younger people in Taiwan these days … seem to have difficulty finding high quality jobs … and decent housing in good parts of town,” he said.

Taiwan’s youth unemployment rate is slowly improving, with national statistics sat around 8 per cent for those aged 15-19 and 11 per cent for 20-24s as of November.

According to the Global Property Guide, Taipei’s house price to income ratio rose from 6.4 in 2004 to 16.2 in 2022 — although it dropped slightly in 2023 — making it one of the most expensive cities in the world, higher than London, New York and Sydney.

First time voter Chang Chia-hua, 21, supports the TPP because he feels the party’s policies are better for young people.

“I believe Ko Wen-je has a solid plan for social housing,” he said.

“For example, his policy is to expand social housing, ensuring that every young person has a place to live.

“I think, with my current salary, it’s challenging to achieve the goal of buying a house, for myself and most young people, it’s hard enough just to live and support a family.”

Professor Yen says while Taiwan’s young voters have been vocal throughout the campaign, their influence on the result will ultimately come down to voter turnout, which has historically been lower among the younger demographic.

“How effective or how impactful they are on election day, it really is contingent on whether they get out of their door and vote,” she said.

Vincent Chao, a spokesperson for Mr Lai, says the DPP is, at least in part, suffering from incumbency. For many young people, the DPP has been in government for much of their lives.

“Being in government eight years has its associated baggage and that’s something we have to understand,” Mr Chao said.

“But I think aside from that, many of our young people here in Taiwan are facing similar difficulties as young people in other developed democracies around the world.

“You do see stagnant wage growth, particularly in the service sector, you do see higher housing prices, you do see the cost of living continue to increase.”

KMT international affairs representative Wennie Wu says her party is trying to address these concerns too.

One of the KMT’s key policy differences is that it still supports nuclear power, which the DPP has committed to phase out by 2025.

But the KMT has also proposed novel policies such as a 1-million-Taiwan-dollar (around $48,000) means-tested payment for families who have a third child, to help address the island’s low birth rate.

Jodie Sun, 55, believes the KMT will be a steadier hand at navigating cross-strait relations and that in turn, the economy will improve.

“There was no hostility spiralling around during the eight years [of the previous KMT government], there were no military threats from the mainland,” she says.

“Based on these past experiences, I feel the KMT’s cross-strait policy is stable and can contribute to peace.”

A campaign disrupted by chaos and Chinese interference

Taiwan has a reputation for dramatic, colourful politics and this campaign has delivered in spades.

Early in the campaign, the TPP had an unfortunate mishap in the translation of its campaign slogan, “Vote White, Vote Right”, which the party later removed. The TPP styles itself with the colour white, as opposed to the DPP’s green and the KMT’s blue.

Then there was a farcical public breakdown of negotiations between the opposition candidates, who had been trying to form a coalition.

Only a week from election day, a former TPP spokesperson who is now running as an independent was arrested over allegations she received bribes from China in cryptocurrency.

And several Chinese balloons — which Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) says are meteorological — have been flying across the island in recent weeks.

Then on Tuesday, a Chinese satellite launch triggered a nationwide alert.

The Chinese language warning stated it was a satellite that  flew through airspace above the southern part of Taiwan, but a mistranslation into English described the object as a missile.

The DPP Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, who was addressing a press conference full of international media when the alert came through, clarified the confusion and described it as another example of China’s “grey zone” activity. The KMT accused the MND of attempting to mislead the public.

Mr Sung says this type of military activity can be an effective way for China to make its presence known.

“[Beijing uses] military pressure around the Taiwan Strait as a way … to persuade voters that perhaps if they vote for the wrong guy, maybe the invasion threat will become just a bit more likely than before,” he said.

Disinformation has also been rife during the campaign, with debunked deep fakes, completely false stories that the DPP’s vice-presidential candidate is an American citizen who can’t speak Mandarin, and evolving rumours that Taiwan and Washington are collaborating to make bioweapons.

“Beijing will be watching this election very closely,” Mr Sung said.

“Taiwan is almost like the missing puzzle [piece] to China’s discourse of great revival of a Chinese nation. So whatever happens to Taiwan will be a major issue for Beijing.

“And on a more discursive level, Taiwan’s very presence is a symbol that represents the other possibility for China.

“It’s a symbol, and proof, that democracy — in a liberal democratic sense — is compatible with a largely Chinese Confucian culture.”

What will the result mean for Taiwan and the region?

Taiwan has a legally mandated blackout on opinion polls in the days before its elections. Most people agree it will be close and analysts say the result could come down to voter turnout.

“Anything that happens in the last few days can have an impact on whether people feel the urge to come out and vote or not,” Professor Yen said.

“[Events such as the satellite launch] may urge them to feel like, ‘OK, this is going back to this China issue again’. So if that’s on their mind, it’s going to prompt them to come out and vote.”

While the world will be watching closely to see how China responds to the election result, Mr Sung says either way, it won’t do much to affect tensions in the region.

“We do not expect any radical changes in Taiwan’s posture towards China, no matter who gets elected,” he said.

“So it’s Beijing’s further military action that’s really creating a lot of destabilising energy in the region.”

Mr Sung says a DPP victory would likely mean a continuation of strong US-Taiwan ties, which would work in Australia’s interests as well, given its relationship with the US and the existing initiatives and trade negotiations in place.

On the other hand, he believes a KMT victory could see that relationship shift, with friendlier China-Taiwan ties and an acceleration in cross-strait trade potentially coming at some cost to Western trade partners.

However, Professor Yen says given the breadth of issues on the minds of the voting public, the international community would be wrong to interpret the election result as a direct indication of how the Taiwanese public feel about China.

“Even if the KMT wins the presidency, I wouldn’t say it means that Taiwanese people want to be unified with China,” she said.

“It’s a different story for a lot of voters … they may be thinking about China, but not in the same way the international community think about China.”

Despite all these competing pressures, what is clear across the island is the depth of enthusiasm for politics and democracy more broadly.

At a KMT rally in Taipei held in the pouring rain, a man points to an enormous Taiwanese flag over the crowd, brimming with pride. “My country,” he says.

In DPP heartland in regional southern Taiwan, another man explains: “We want to maintain our freedom and democracy.”

Mr Sung, a Taiwanese-Australian, says every election in Taiwan can be seen as a referendum on the island’s identity.

“Taiwan politics is characterised by a super high level of political engagement, and I think that stems from how Taiwan continues to have significant daily debate about its own national identity,” he says.

“Some people think of themselves as Taiwanese, some people think of themselves as both Taiwanese and Chinese.

“Therefore every time they go to an election rally, it’s an act of actively constructing and reconstructing their own identities as well.

“That’s what makes the election here so personal and so energetic, and for us, so fun to watch.”