Taiwan Awaits Presidential Election Results as World Watches

TAIPEI—Vote counting began across Taiwan on Saturday as polls closed in the race to choose a new president in an unpredictable three-way race being closely watched in Washington, Beijing and other capitals around the world.

President Tsai Ing-wen, a frequent target of Beijing’s ire, is due to step down in May because of term limits after eight years in power. Whoever takes on the top job will face stiff challenges, both domestically and internationally, amid geopolitical uncertainty.

Voters have expressed concerns over low wages, high home prices and power shortages—but as with past presidential elections, the most consequential question hovering over this year’s vote is the future of Taiwan’s relationship with Beijing.

Tsai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party have steered the self-ruled island on a political and economic trajectory away from Beijing, instead cultivating closer ties with Washington. Beijing has responded with military exercises and economic coercion, threatening more if Taipei continues on that path.

More than 19 million were eligible to cast their ballots at some 17,000 voting stations, which closed at 4 p.m. local time. There are no exit polls and final results aren’t expected until the evening at the earliest.

Long lines could be seen outside polling stations in Taipei even before the start of voting on Saturday morning, raising hopes for high voter turnout amid the sunny and relatively mild winter weather in Taiwan.

The ruling party’s candidate, Vice President Lai Ching-te, faces two opposition challengers, both favoring a friendlier approach to China. Hou Yu-ih, a former top cop and incumbent mayor of New Taipei City, Taiwan’s most populous city, leads the Nationalist Party’s presidential ticket. Ko Wen-je, a former doctor and mayor of the capital, Taipei, has risen as a serious challenger and a third-party candidate with his upstart Taiwan People’s Party.

The rare presence of a strong third-party challenger injects a new level of uncertainty into this year’s contest. Taiwan forbids the publishing or even public discussion of polling data in the 10 days leading up to the vote, adding to the difficulty of predicting how the vote will shake out.

In Washington, the Biden administration is holding its breath over the electoral outcome, concerned about whether Beijing’s response could unravel a recent steadying of U.S.-China ties.

U.S. officials are bracing for China to increase the pressure on Taiwan after Saturday’s election, especially if Lai wins the presidency, officials and foreign policy specialists said.

China’s Communist government, which claims Taiwan as its territory despite never ruling here, has painted Lai and his running mate—Hsiao Bi-khim, until late last year Taipei’s de facto ambassador in Washington—as proponents of Taiwan independence, a red line for Beijing.

“China has opinions about me and Bi-khim, and that’s because both of us are steadfast in upholding Taiwan’s sovereignty,” Lai said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last month. He portrayed himself as a steadfast defender of peace.

On Friday, a spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry said the Chinese military would “take all necessary measures to resolutely crush any form of secessionist designs for ‘Taiwan independence.’”

In meetings and online discussions with the American specialists and former officials, participants said, Chinese academics outlined Beijing’s general plans for a pressure campaign.

While the Chinese interlocutors didn’t specify what actions would be taken and how soon, the pressure is expected to take a range of forms, from stepped-up military drills to economic measures, the participants said. Incursions by Chinese naval vessels into Taiwan’s 12-nautical-mile territorial limit or flyovers by drones across the island are among the possible tactics, they said.

“The expectation is that Beijing will go hard on Lai,” said Yun Sun, a China foreign policy watcher at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.

Beijing has already intensified pressure on Taiwan ahead of the vote.

China’s Commerce Ministry on Tuesday said it was considering expanding plans to suspend tariff reductions on a variety of Taiwanese imports, including farm products, seafood and auto parts. Beijing also launched a tax probe into Apple supplier Foxconn, whose Taiwanese founder later dropped out as a presidential candidate, and investigated Taiwan’s most commercially successful rock band for alleged lip-syncing—actions that the DPP-led government has described as attempts to meddle in the coming polls.

“China has been trying to interfere in our democratic elections all along,” Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told a news conference this week. “They want to influence a critical minority, especially in a tight race,” he said, adding that a shift of 2.5% of votes could change the outcome.

Biden administration officials, for their part, have urged Beijing not to raise the heat on Taiwan, while seeking to reassure Chinese officials of their own carefulness in dealing with the island.

“Regardless of who is elected, our policy toward Taiwan will remain the same and our strong unofficial relationship will also continue,” an administration official said in a briefing this past week.

In New Taipei City, voters queued up early in the morning to cast their ballots.

Vincent Wu, 66, a retired stock market trader, said he voted for Lai because he wanted to see Taiwan “making more new friends with all other democratic countries,” despite Beijing’s efforts to isolate it internationally.

Lin Pao-ling, 61, a homemaker, also cast her vote for Lai, seeing him as the continuation of the status quo. “We hope we can still enjoy our freedom and democracy,” she said, adding that she didn’t see a Lai presidency as increasing the risk of war.

Chen Chi-lin, a 60-year-old plumbing technician, said he was fed up with the ruling party after eight years and just wanted a change. He wouldn’t say whom he voted for, but offered a litany of complaints about the DPP, including allegations of corruption.

The presidential contest isn’t the only one on Saturday with broad implications. Taiwanese voters are also set to pick a new 113-member legislature, which the DPP currently dominates.

If the DPP were to win the presidency but lose the legislature—an outcome that many political analysts believe is likely—Lai could struggle to push through votes on a range of issues, including approval of weapons purchases that Washington says are critical to bolstering Taiwan’s ability to deter an attack from China.

The only president in Taiwanese history who had to confront an opposition-controlled legislature was Chen Shui-bien, whose time in office in the 2000s was marked by brutal conflicts between lawmakers, several involving their fists.

“This election cycle is extremely competitive,” You Si-kun, the current speaker of the legislature and a founding member of the DPP, said in an interview ahead of the vote. “Especially in the legislative races, it’s a tough fight.”

Young voters are a wild card in this election. Driven by concerns over income inequality and housing prices, many have flocked to Ko, the third-party candidate.

Stan Liu, a 20-year-old college student and first-time voter from New Taipei City who is studying business administration, said he is excited by the prospect of something new.

“It has always been either the blue or green parties,” he said ahead of the vote, referring to the KMT and DPP by their respective colors. “I want to try a different political party for a change.”

Power supply has been another hot-button topic, with the country’s booming semiconductor industry straining the island’s energy capacity. On Friday, state-owned Taiwan Power Co. said nearly 3,000 staff will be standing by for any emergency or blackouts on Saturday to make sure that “the public can vote with peace of mind.”

Though domestic issues have dominated on the campaign trail, China still looms large in the elections, analysts said.

“Every election in Taiwan is to some degree about China,” said Nathan Batto, a longtime scholar of Taiwan’s politics at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Political Science in Taipei. “It’s always going to be about identity or are you Chinese or Taiwanese?” he said. “This is baked into the party system.”

The latest polls tracking Taiwanese identity show the proportion of people on the island who identify primarily as Chinese plummeting to below 3%.

Write to Joyu Wang at [email protected]

Charles Hutzler in Washington contributed to this article.