Lai Ching-te’s inauguration speech is probably one of the most in-demand documents in the world right now.
As Taiwan’s president-elect prepares to take office on Monday, the burning question abroad is where he’ll come down on China. But for Lai himself, there’s an objective that’s just as important: securing the political upper hand.
Of course, relations with the mainland are a key part of Lai’s domestic success. His stronger stance on China helped him clinch victory in January, despite the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) faltering reputation for domestic delivery.
But so far, there are no signs that Lai intends to rock the boat. It’s true, back in 2017, that he once described himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence” and Beijing has since labelled him a “stubborn separatist”. But his actions both pre- and post-election have pointed to a desire for continuity, maintaining outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen’s focus on cross-strait stability.
He’s also been helped by delicate behind-the-scenes negotiations between Beijing and Washington to limit the potential for dangerous escalation. All three players are helpfully aligned in wanting to stop tensions spiralling. For Beijing and Washington, this is geostrategic. But for Lai, it’s also just basic politics: he has to appeal to the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese voters who favour preserving the status quo.
All this means that, despite some pessimistic predictions of imminent escalations, his speech promises to be thankfully anticlimactic – much like the election itself back in January.
Instead, Lai’s biggest challenges arguably lie at home. There’s only so much voters want to hear about China – in fact, outgoing President Tsai only made one direct reference to the mainland in her 2020 inauguration speech. Political rivals are ready to push Lai and the DPP on less geopolitically glamorous but equally key issues such as wage stagnation, energy security and housing. Expect these to take up far more of a speech that is likely to centre around the three core themes of Lai’s election campaign: democracy and peace, innovation and prosperity, and justice and sustainability.
But while Lai’s ambitions are clear, his ability to deliver is less so. This has been an election of post-democratisation firsts: the first time a single party has won three successive presidential terms, the first time a third party – anti-establishment newcomers the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) – has performed so strongly and, crucially, the first time since 2004 that Taiwan has had a hung parliament.
All these elements combine to make life harder for Lai. His party, the DPP, was already facing rising voter fatigue and questions over its domestic delivery. With the DPP’s legislative majority now lost, opposition parties are well-positioned to ensure the DPP has a tough time trying to rebuild that reputation.
This is already playing out in Taiwan’s new parliament, the Legislative Yuan, where opposition parties the Kuomintang (KMT) and the TPP teamed up on 3 May to vote down a bill that would have required formal approval for any elected officials visiting the mainland. The vote was swung by the TPP, the relative newcomers whose eight seats give them the deciding vote in Taiwan’s hung parliament.
Having ruled out entering a formal coalition with either of Taiwan’s two traditional parties, the TPP is free to shift allegiances in whichever way leader Ko Wen-je thinks will best position his party for an even stronger performance in the 2028 elections.
Lai will be keeping an eye on this unprecedented dynamic as he goes into his inauguration. But so will Beijing, which sees Taiwan’s new domestic divisions as an opportunity to peel voters away from a party it claims “does not represent the mainstream public opinion on the island”.
Already Beijing has been welcoming delegations of KMT opposition lawmakers and even Ma Ying-jeou, the former president and KMT leader, whose two trips have been the first by a former or current Taiwanese leader since 1949. During his most recent trip, Ma met with President Xi Jinping himself and called on Lai to avoid “walking the independence path” and recognise Xi’s “goodwill” towards Taiwan.
That goodwill, however, has been targeted disproportionately at opposition figures. During meetings with the KMT delegation, Chinese officials announced that they would loosen restrictions on imports of certain Taiwanese fruit and seafood, and that residents of China’s Fujian province would be able to resume visits to the Taiwanese island of Matsu – a potential precursor to a broader loosening of travel restrictions that could help boost Taiwan’s struggling tourism industry.
In the meantime, China has also been keeping up military pressure on Taiwan. The Chinese coast guard has launched regular patrols around Taiwan’s Kinmen islands, while in early May Chinese military aircraft conducted the closest-ever publicly disclosed fly-by.
This is, in essence, a more sophisticated twist on Beijing’s traditional carrot-and-stick approach to promoting unification. The aim is to send a clear message to Taiwanese voters: there are rewards ready for those willing to engage on Beijing’s terms and there are risks for those who don’t. In other words, this is Beijing’s campaign-trail warning in action: the choice between the DPP and KMT is a choice between war and peace.
This is an approach that presents a domestic challenge for all Taiwan’s party leaders, not just Lai. The potential benefit of greater economic ties with the mainland has to be balanced with the risk of alienating mainstream Taiwanese voters: there's a real political risk for anyone seen to be getting too cosy with Beijing.
So while the world has its eyes on Beijing, Lai and his opponents have their eyes firmly on 2028. That means that Monday’s speech isn’t just about the geopolitics – it's about politics plain and simple.