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“I also want to call on China to stop threatening Taiwan politically and militarily, and take on global responsibility of maintaining peace and stability, to ensure the world is free from fear of war” 

This is what Lai Ching Te aka William Lai said in his inaugural speech on May 20, 2024 while taking the responsibility of the president of Taiwan. In his speech it is seen that Lai wanted to be the flag bearer of peace. He does not encourage or instigate any kind of war or invasion by China. 

We all know about the history of Taiwan and China, as after getting separated in 1949. However, China still wants Taiwan to be a part of the mainland and showed full determination to annex the island in the future by force. Though the people of Taiwan do not think alike. They want freedom and democracy to make their decision and come out from the shackles of China. To maintain their influence over Taiwan, China formed ties with another political party of Taiwan, The Kuomintang (KMT), who perceived the same ideology as China.

This year things got uptight when in the elections of Taiwan, The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s Lai Ching Te won the presidential election but DPP could not win the majority seats in Legislative Yuan. The majority seats were won by the KMT (52 seats out of 113 seats) as the main opposition party and the other 8 seats were won by Taiwan’s Peoples Party (TPP). In this complex scenario president Lai Ching Te had to face more internal challenges than the external ones. In the matter of policy and law change, the majority of the legislative KMT and TPP can easily overshadow DPP’s opinion as DPP does not have the majority votes in the parliament.

On the other hand, before the inauguration day, on May 17 2024, a brawl started in the parliament by the lawmakers of DPP and KMT on matters of policy reform. The opposition political party wanted to have the Legislature Yuan to have greater power over the government and also wanted to criminalize the officials who make false statements in the parliament. As the other lawmakers of DPP was not agreeing to it, other than proceeding the discussion the chaos started and the lawmakers were throwing chairs on each other, physical violence took place and the parliament environment got messy. 

Even before that incident, Taiwanese youth carried out protests against the KTM members in the parliament. According to them, Taiwan will not adopt any policy which will favor China and hollow the democracy of Taiwan. This Protest by the youth shows how determined they are on the issue of freedom. We can see the power of the Taiwanese people back in 2014 in the “Sunflower Students Movement”. In that year KMT was in power and they proposed the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) which will enhance trade, banking, healthcare, tourism, film, telecommunications, and publishing exchange between China and Taiwan. This agreement was sent to the Legislative Yuan for ratification. As the then opposition DPP was against it as well as the student, civic community and academics were opposing this agreement as this agreement with China will make Taiwan vulnerable by making them economically dependent on China. The Sunflower Movement took place and wanted a “clause-to-clause” review. Later because of the long delay, the agreement was never ratified by the Legislature. So, even by forming the government, KMT was unable to exercise their power to ratify the agreement. Analyzing the past incidents, it is observed that Taiwanese people are vocal about their democracy, can exercise their rights and do not have any intension to bow down to China. 

However, this year the scenario is different. Despite the protests, on May 28, 2024, the legislature passed the reform which allows the lawmakers to ask military, private companies and individuals to reveal their information for parliamentarians. This reform also criminalizes the public officials, including making the president present reports to answer lawmakers' questions. This reform will provide too much power to the KMT members to exploit democracy by favoring China. Though the reform can be vetoed by the Executive Yuan by the president, this nature of political turmoil will be difficult to handle for president Lai Ching Te. 

Talking about the external matters, on May 19 and May 20 (inauguration day of Lai Ching Te as president) China carried out military drills and justified their action by saying its “punishment” for Taiwan for carrying out the election and inauguration of president Lai Ching Te on the 20th. They did not just stop over here. After the inauguration on 23 and 24 May, the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) announced joint military action, called Joint Sword-2024A, on the islands near Taiwan. Through this operation China focused to separate the Taiwan outlayed islands (Kinmen, Wuqiu, Matsu, and Dongyin) from its mainland and break down all communication or help among them. Apart from that, on May 21, 2024, China has banned U.S. lawmaker Mike Gallagher from entering the country as he is interfering in the internal matters of China and supporting Taiwan’s independence. As it was not enough on May 22, 2024, as retaliation, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced sanctions on 12 U.S. defense companies and 10 defense company executives. 

Lastly, Taiwan should gear up their game in the international area by making alliances with western countries other than the USA. After the inauguration of the new president, China’s military drills increased. As a result, Taiwanese people are getting trained in war tactics and paramedic for the possible invasion by China. Other than preparing themselves, Lai Ching Te should focus on building alliances and getting military and financial help to overcome the aggression of China. Further, the issue of the South China Sea will make the rivalry sour than ever.   

The views expressed in these write-up are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policies of CGS.

Depanjali Roy is a Research Associate, CGS