by Gianni Criveller

William Lai's victory, the electorate's clear stance for maintaining the "status quo," Beijing's increasingly insistent threats in Oceania today cashing in on Nauru's "rupture" of diplomatic relations with Taipei. Fears of escalating tensions with a leader willing to do anything for "reunification."

Milan (AsiaNews) - William Lai Ching-te, leader of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won Saturday's closely contested presidential election.

The margin of victory is wide, over 40 percent of the vote: however, this does not translate into a clear majority in parliament.

Kuomintang candidate Hou Yu-ih was defeated. His party has historically been opposed by Beijing but whose doctrine it shares that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is part of it. That is why China would welcome his victory.

Third placed Ko Wen-je, former mayor of Taipei and founder of the People's Party: progressive in orientation, he has ambitions to reconcile the interests of China and the United States. With his deputies, in parliament Ko will be able to play an arbitration role between the two major parties.

William Lai belongs to the party that, when it arose in the early 1990s, was entrenched in the south, where the Taiwanese language, spoken by 70 percent of the island's inhabitants, prevails.

Taiwanese-speaking citizens aspire to independence. However, in view of threats from China, the party leaders who have been elected president (after Chen Shui-bian and Tsai Ing-wen, Lai is the third Dpp president), have renounced the formal declaration of independence.

Rather, they promote the perpetuation of the status quo: that is, total autonomy for Taiwan, but without formal international recognition.

Polls prove that the vast majority of the population also thinks so: no to reunification with Communist China and no to declaration of independence. It would drag the island into a disastrous, lose-lose war. People prefer to maintain the 'status quo' and give up nationalist aspirations. 

On the other hand, the prospect of a peaceful reunification that would safeguard Taiwan's democratic achievements has been erased by the sad affair in Hong Kong, where the Chinese regime, introducing the National Security Act (2020) imprisoned the entire democratic opposition.

Yet the leaders, non-violent, imprisoned in Hong Kong had called for freedom and democracy, not the separation of their city from China.

The "one country two systems" formula that governed Hong Kong and now essentially aborted was supposed to function as a model and reassurance for reunification with Taiwan. Now the citizens of Taiwan can no longer count on that prospect.

It is to be regretted that the feelings of the people of the island count for so little in political analysis and world opinion.

Few know or are interested in learning about Taiwan's story. That is, its painful history of massacres and oppression; of the miraculous economic, social and political progress; of the achievement of freedom and democracy that took place in the 1990s: the writer lived on the island then and saw its transformation.

The opinion of the 23 million Taiwanese, however expressed in free elections, seems to count for little: Taiwan is universally regarded only as a still unresolved political problem with China.

The focus always and only comes back to Beijing. Xi Jinping has taken all power upon himself in a totalizing way as never before in the past 30 years, drawing heavily on nationalist and sovereignist rhetoric.

He has explicitly said, on multiple occasions and all of them solemn (the latest, in his New Year's address) that the time for reunification cannot be postponed indefinitely, and that the use of force is not an option ruled out.

In 2005 Beijing had passed a tough anti-secessionist law authorizing war against Taiwan in three cases: the island proclaims independence; the latter appears inevitable; and peaceful reunification seems impossible.

Chinese missiles remain aimed at the island, and in 2023 military pressure around Taiwan has increased with air raids and warship movements.

Dong Jun, China's new defense minister, is a general experienced precisely in military maneuvers around Taiwan. Several army generals have been replaced; Xi Jinping's control over the military apparatus is fully established.

After the election, with the victory of the candidate closest to Taiwan's independence ambitions, there are fears of an upsurge of tension to a wider economic and military confrontation. Taiwan is strategically located in the Pacific, between Japan, Southeast Asia and the Oceanic continent, making it a key area for world balances.

And it is emblematic that just today, within hours of the outcome of the vote, the small Oceanic island of Nauru-one of only 12 countries in the world that have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan-announced to break them off, in conjunction with the opening of its own embassy in Beijing.

Isolating Taiwan is the condition that the People's Republic of China imposes on everyone in order to gain access to forms of economic cooperation.

The United States will not be able to allow Taiwan to become a Chinese military outpost on the Pacific, conflicting with its own economic, strategic and military security interests.

Taiwan produces more than 80 percent of the world's microchips, indispensable tools for everyday life on the planet, from cell phones to computers, from transportation and military components to household appliances: in short, any device that contains high-tech components.

The destruction of Taiwan would bring the functionality of the world as we now know it to its knees. In addition, almost half of the world's container ships pass through the Taiwan Strait.

There is also another element, almost psychological, concerning the personal aspirations of the very ambitious Xi Jinping, a dictator who has had no hesitation in eliminating, politically and socially, opponents and opponents.

He is inspired, rhetorically, by Mao Zedong, and would like to go down in history as a leader on par with Mao and Deng Xiaoping, the two 'last emperors.'

The former founded the New China (i.e., the People's Republic of China); the latter opened it up to modernization, lifting it out of poverty and unifying Macau and Hong Kong.

In order to gain the historic recognition of being glorified as their equal, Xi has only the last feat left: to bring Taiwan back into the bosom of Greater China.

A historic, sacred, inalienable task. It is to be feared that he wants to do it within his lifetime, and that he is willing to pay (or rather make pay) a very high price.