Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) victory in the Jan. 16 presidential election was retaliation by the middle class against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government for its economic failure, a major South Korean newspaper said on Saturday.
The Dong-A Ilbo said that Tsai would gain strong support in the 113-seat Legislative Yuan, where the DPP won 68 seats, citing the views of four Taiwanese analysts: Korean Culture Association chairman Rick Chu (朱立熙), National Chengchi University professor Hung Yao-nan (洪耀南), Thinking Taiwan Foundation Forum chief editor Cheryl Lai (賴秀如) and Taiwan Thinktank deputy executive director Lai I-chung (賴怡忠). (Chu and Cheryl Lai used to work for the Taipei Times.)
Chu told the Dong-A Ilbo that the election results were an indictment of the KMT because in the eight years that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been in power, Taiwan has become overdependent on China.
As a result, China’s economic slowdown has affected Taiwan, he said, adding that only a few Taiwanese businesses that have worked with Chinese officials have profited from closer cross-strait relations.
Hung said the wealth gap in Taiwan had widened significantly between 2007 and 2013.
Taiwan’s top 5 percent income earners were making 66 times those in the lowest 5 percent in 2007, but by 2013, the gap had widened to a factor of 99, and the results of the presidential election were a form of retaliation by the middle class against that situation, he said.
Cheryl Lai said younger voters supported the DPP because there has been no increase in job opportunities in recent years.
Taiwan’s economic growth in 2014 was 3 percent, but salaries were cut and job opportunities became scarcer, so young people feel they cannot afford to get married or buy a home, a situation that has reached a level of desperation, she said.
Lai I-chung also looked at the effects of the young vote, saying that all of the students who led a massive protest in 2014 against a trade in services agreement with China were born after the democratization of Taiwan.
For the Sunflower generation, Taiwan’s independence is natural, so it is natural for them to support the independence-leaning DPP, Lai I-chung said.
Chu said that 1.29 million of Taiwan’s electorate of 18.81 million were first-time voters, who are likely to be predisposed toward independence.
Asked about the possibility of a meeting between Tsai and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), Cheryl Lai said that such an encounter was unlikely any time soon because China insists on the so-called “1992 consensus” as the basis of cross-strait relations, while Tsai does not recognize the existence of such a consensus.
The “1992 consensus” refers to a supposed understanding reached during the cross-strait talks in 1992 that both Taiwan and China acknowledge that there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what that means.
Former KMT legislator Su Chi (蘇起) said in 2006 that he had made up the term in 2000, when he was head of the Mainland Affairs Council, before the KMT handed power to the DPP.
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