Taiwan’s next president, Lai Ching-toku, announced Monday under pressure to increase social spending, address deepening economic disparities, and at the same time meet U.S. demands to strengthen defense against an increasingly assertive China. Begin your term of office.
Since free direct presidential elections began in 1996, every Taiwanese leader has entered office with a message for Beijing. The Chinese government claims Taiwan as its own and has threatened to annex it by force if necessary.
But against the backdrop of rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait, the demands on Mr. Lai to balance Taiwan’s security risks with guarantees to protect its independence are greater than on most of his predecessors.
“There has been extensive communication with Washington regarding the president’s inaugural address, and the U.S. has communicated some guidelines,” said a person familiar with the talks.
Officials from Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DP) say the U.S. government is keen to ensure that Lai sticks to the China policy line of his predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, and that Tsai Ing-wen is a leader in the often-confusing relationship. Multiple sources said that the country’s cautious approach to relations between the two countries has won wide support internationally. .
U.S. officials said the American Institute in Taiwan, the U.S. government’s quasi-embassy in Taipei, sent Taiwan officials to discuss Lai’s inaugural address and to highlight long-standing U.S. policy on cross-Strait issues. He said he is in contact with them.
“This season, we have no intention of making any major changes or changes to the situation. . . . ‘Stay status quo’ has become a byword for us,” the source said.
Mr. Lai sought to reassure the United States with his commitment to decisively strengthen Taiwan’s defenses, including increasing the military budget, revamping the military power structure, and focusing on cost-effective mobile weapons systems and stronger civil defense. would be.
At the same time, however, we are acutely aware of the need to address serious economic concerns among many Taiwanese, especially young people. Rai’s team members said his top priority would be domestic reform, although his government intends to raise the defense budget from 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) to 3% this year.
Decades of economic policy have focused on supporting high-tech industries such as Taiwan’s world-leading chip manufacturing, leaving other parts of the economy on the back burner. This has widened inequality, with 68 percent of the population having below-average incomes, a senior Democratic Progressive Party official said.
“We need to explain to the United States the importance of social solidarity for national unity,” the official said.
Mr. Rai will have a hard time building that kind of unity from day one. He won a three-way election in January with just 40% of the vote, and his Democratic Progressive Party lacks a majority in parliament.
He promised to prioritize policies with bipartisan support. But hopes for a deal were dampened on Friday when parliament erupted into a scuffle over an opposition proposal to expand powers through a bill that would allow the finding of contempt of government officials, a criminal liability punishable by prison terms. is. The Democratic Party argued that such legal changes were unconstitutional.
Mr. Yori’s policies include reforming the national health insurance system, which lacks financial resources, and expanding childcare subsidies and elderly care. Beyond social spending, he will also aim to shift economic policy away from incentives for specific industries to creating more service sector jobs and stimulating domestic consumption.
“To give these people a sense of well-being and security, we need to focus on social investment and build a more universal social security system,” a Democratic Progressive Party official said. “There won’t be much pushback from the opposition. They might even try to out-spend us on that.”
Mr. Lai has appointed a number of private sector executives to his cabinet, the most prominent of whom is J.W. Kuo, the entrepreneur and chairman of Topco, a supplier to the semiconductor industry, who is closely aligned with the academic-minded Mr. Tsai. draws a line.
But in the sensitive areas of China policy, national security and national defense, the president-elect retained nearly all of Tsai’s team. Foreign Minister Joseph Wu will take over as head of Prime Minister Lai’s National Security Council, and Wellington Khoo, head of the National Security Council, will become defense minister.
Democratic Progressive Party officials hope the continued appointment will bring stability as China has escalated military exercises close to Taiwan’s territorial waters and airspace in recent weeks.
In a gesture of goodwill toward Beijing, which has denounced Tsai as a “dangerous separatist,” the new president plans to use her inaugural address to signal her readiness for dialogue, in line with Tsai’s practice.
But Lai also said that Tsai had outlined that Taiwan firmly adheres to its democratic system, that the Republic of China (official name) and the People’s Republic of China should not be subservient to each other, and that Taiwan would resist annexation or annexation. It is expected that the principles will be restated. Violation of sovereignty. Taiwan’s future must be determined according to the will of the people, Lai added.
Despite maintaining Tsai’s national security personnel and approach to China, some observers believe Lai’s tenure in office could actually be very different. . During her 28-year political career, she has shown a penchant for political combat, a stark contrast to Tsai, a restrained and soft-spoken former trade policy official.
“As we address the challenges we face, we will also have to find our own voices,” the incoming administration’s top officials said, adding that Lai would “explain his vision in his own words.” Ta.
As mayor of Tainan City, Mr. Lai advocated the abolition of slush funds for city council members, sparking a revolt in the local assembly.
During a visit to Shanghai in 2014, he told Chinese scholars that Taiwan independence was not an idea that originated with the Democratic Progressive Party, but was a long-standing aspiration of the Taiwanese people, and that only with the understanding of the Chinese government could the two sides have common ground. He said he could find out. His candor was unlike any other visiting Taiwanese politician.
In 2017, when he was then prime minister under Tsai, he infamously described himself as a “pragmatic activist for Taiwan’s independence.”
A source who has known the next president for many years said, “Mr. Lai’s brain is not Ms. Tsai’s brain.”
Additional reporting by Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
