Taiwan heads to the polls on Saturday with the island sitting within the middle of a wrestle for regional dominance between the United States and China.
“Taiwanese voters, for the primary time, are voting between two candidates which have fully completely different visions of what Taiwan’s relationship is with China and the world,” mentioned Shirley Lin, Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics on the Miller Heart of Public Affairs, College of Virginia.
Within the race are incumbent president Tsai Ing-wen from the Democratic Progressive Occasion (DPP) and Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Occasion’s Han Kuo-yu, additionally the mayor of Kaohsiung metropolis.
The presidential vote on January 11 is seen as a referendum on Taiwan’s identification, sovereignty and Chinese language affect. Legislative elections may also be held on the identical day, though the race is historically targeted extra on native points and fewer on nationwide sovereignty, famous Eurasia Group, the geopolitical consultancy.
Communist China has by no means dominated over Taiwan, however Beijing claims self-ruled Taiwan as its territory and has by no means renounced the usage of pressure to attain “reunification.”
Taiwan’s relationship with China has cooled considerably since Tsai, an independence-leaning politician, took workplace in 2016.
And Tsai has got down to steer Taiwan’s reliance away from mainland China each economically and in different respects,…