Taiwan Straits: Reality behind the battle of identities

Image Credits: Rovin Ferrer 

https://unsplash.com/photos/people-visiting-a-tourist-spot-lmoxyu1PXVU

 

Summary: For people in both Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), is the future of Cross-Strait relations what keeps them up at night and informs their political choices? Or are everyday issues like economic precariousness more pertinent? This article looks into the often-neglected fatigue that young voters in Taiwan feel towards ‘the Strait issue’, as well as the economic hardships facing youths in Mainland China that may take precedence over their concern for unification. It then concludes with a measured take on what this could mean for the relationship between Taiwan and PRC as developments continue to unfold in the region, and the challenges that are likely to befall DPP despite winning an unprecedented third term.

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Editor’s note: This article was originally written in February 2024. Minor revisions have been made since then.

 

As the Presidential elections in Taiwan drew to a close in January 2024 with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) winning an unprecedented third term in office, most international media outlets such as BBC, Reuters, and The Guardian covered this development as ominous for Cross-Strait relations between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan. The underlying assumption informing such coverage was that the DPP’s victory would imply elevated chances of war, and a Kuomintang (KMT) victory would be less likely to aggravate the PRC. Even in the lead-up to the elections, international media often analysed the election primarily through the lens of what is often dubbed ‘the Strait issue’.

However, was such coverage representative of the opinions on the ground? This article examines whether Taiwan’s status via-a-vis the PRC really was on the forefront of Taiwanese voters’ minds, and how the DPP’s victory at the polls should be understood. It then looks into the perspectives of the Chinese public, an often under-analysed stakeholder, on this same issue.

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Taiwan

For Taiwanese youths in their 20s and 30s, the Strait issue is far from their only or top priority. According to polls and interviews done by multiple different sources including CNN and Taiwan’s local media outlets, social mobility and income are the issues at the forefront of most youths’ minds. 

To put things into perspective, fresh graduates in Taiwan make NT$34,000 per month (S$1,410) on average, and the average expense in Taipei is NT$33,000 per month (S$1,370). In other words, most youths are just breaking even with their income, with little to no margin to spare for recreation or savings. With housing prices rising faster than income growth and savings stagnant, youths are finding it incredibly difficult to build their future in the capital city where job prospects are supposed to be the brightest (this CNA documentary on Taiwan’s ‘Stuck Generation’ is great for those interested). 

Given this backdrop of limited social mobility, many youths do not have the luxury of worrying about the Strait issue or politics at large. The issue that they want the government to tackle is the domestic problem of low salary, rather than the external problem of Taiwan’s position in the world. The international media may be surprised by how unpanicked Taiwanese people can be regarding Chinese threats of military action, but the expatriate journalists and scholars forming these opinions are not living hand to mouth in the same way they are. The reality on the ground is that economic hardship takes up the mental and emotional bandwidth of many youths.

In fact, one point that the international community frequently neglects is that Taiwanese youths actively feel fatigue towards the Strait issue. Since the DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen won her second term in 2020, occurrences of Chinese military aeroplanes entering Taiwan’s air defence identification zone has been in the thousands. The Taiwanese are thus desensitised to news of such military activities due to their high frequency. 

All this is not to say that Taiwan does not care about the Chinese threat entirely; rather, the current generation of Taiwanese youth are labelled “natural independents”. The youths who are 25–30 years old today are born after 1996, when democratic consolidation took place and the island had its first direct presidential election. This means youth today were born in an era where the “Taiwanese” identity was already fully formed, as opposed to earlier generations who had to fight for their civil rights against the military regime that came over from the PRC. If we compare the discussions of a national identity that youths do not have to work for against livelihoods that they have to work very hard for, it is not difficult to see which topic garners more concern from the youths. And when politics continues to place the Strait issue in the spotlight rather than economic hardship, it results in their fatigue over this topic regardless of its significance.

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Mainland China

Moving our perspective to the other party involved in this conflict, a similar situation can be observed in Mainland China. Youths in China face extremely high unemployment rates, hitting 21.3% in June 2023 before the National Bureau of Statistics stopped releasing figures for six months, citing the need to readjust calculation methods. When a new unemployment rate of 13.2% was published in June 2024, students were excluded from the calculation.

The nature of the media environment in the PRC makes it very difficult to determine if Chinese youths are disappointed in their government the same way Taiwanese youths are, but it should be fair to say that the unemployment rate would be the most worrying situation for these youths. In the same way that Taiwanese youths do not have the mental bandwidth to worry about the Strait issue, it seems more reasonable to think that employment prospects would be at the forefront of youths’ minds rather than the issue of unification.

Given the lack of multi-party national elections in China, it may be hard to see how people’s opinions will matter to the Chinese government’s decision to invade Taiwan. However, this may change if we factor in the economic costs China will have to bear in a potential war. According to research done by Rand corporation, a yearlong war in the Taiwan Strait would cause China’s GDP to shrink by 25–35%. For comparison, Russia’s GDP dropped by 2.1% in 2022 after it invaded Ukraine. Opinion polls by YouGov indicate that more than half of individuals in 20 different countries including major powers like Canada, Germany and Switzerland will support harsh economic sanctions against China if an invasion of Taiwan occurs. If we combine these possible economic costs with the existing level of youth unemployment, it raises the question of whether the Chinese government has the economic ability to maintain Chinese citizens’ livelihood at its current standard if they decide to militarily invade Taiwan. While we do not have the answer to this question, these data do show that the consideration of invading Taiwan is not solely dependent on the Chinese government’s ideological desire for national unification. 

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Significance

If Taiwanese citizens find social mobility more important than the international status of independence while Chinese citizens may be confronted with greater economic hardships due to the military costs arising from invading Taiwan, where does that leave us? Is the status quo going to be maintained indefinitely, where Taiwan indefinitely remains de facto independent with no de jure independence?

Overall, maintaining the status quo would be the best-case scenario. The worry arises when we question whether it is realistic for this status quo to continue. As it is, both sides having more pressing economic issues to tackle before dealing with territorial issues mean that the Strait issue is going to become a battle of attrition, which is not beneficial for Taiwan. Taiwanese society is becoming increasingly apathetic towards politics because of the fatigue caused by long-term polarisation between “green” (DPP) and “blue” (KMT). A DPP supporter might be ready to rally behind independence and fight for Taiwan, a KMT supporter will refer to such a mindset as “challenging China”, and a neutral citizen is likely fatigued from this disagreement that has lasted for decades with no solution. In comparison, Chinese citizens will rally behind reunification much more unitedly than their Taiwanese counterparts will rally behind independence. 

If China’s economy improves sufficiently such that they can ride through the harsh sanctions and economic impact, Xi will have the space to carry out unification and forge his legacy as one of the country’s greatest leaders. On the other hand, in Taiwan, the challenge for Lai does not stop at improving the economic hardships faced by youths. Culturally and socially, he will also need a roadmap on renewing youths’ engagement with Taiwan’s politics that has been chipped away by polarisation and fatigue with the Strait issue. This will be a very difficult task at least for the next four years, considering the legislature is currently dominated by the KMT whose policy directives will most likely be different from Lai’s. This will include topics related to the Strait issue such as national defence, but also domestic issues such as youth benefits, elderly care, nuclear energy, and others that are more closely related to the daily lives of Taiwanese. The tension is further exacerbated by the victory of the KMT’s Han Kuo Yu in becoming the President of the Legislative Yuan, in effect the Speaker of Taiwan’s legislature, who has on several occasions referred to his impeachment in 2020 as a smear campaign and as a result of DPP’s manipulation.

 

Conclusion

Taking into consideration the economic environment and voters’ preferences, the biggest challenge of any Taiwanese president from this point onwards might not simply be China’s hostility. Rather, for both Lai and successive presidents, the biggest obstacle lies in fixing voters’ fatigue towards elections while not neglecting Taiwan’s safety against Chinese military aggression. Negative feelings such as fatigue and apathy will only continue to grow if left undealt with, which is why cognisant efforts aimed at politically re-engaging the youths are needed.

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February, 2024