Suddenly, the music stopped, the lights dimmed and a middle-aged woman in jeans and a T shirt walked onto the stage. “I’ve never been involved in politics before,” said Fang Chih-yi in an emotional plea. “But now is a crucial time. We must hold on to what we have. [KMT candidate] Lien Chan is the only one who can make our country safe.” Later, Lien himself took the stage, wearing a baseball cap with a butterfly logo–the KMT’s less-than-subtle attempt to show that it has shed its authoritarian past. As he spoke, images of Taiwan’s missiles, tanks and helicopters flickered across the enormous screen behind him. “We oppose antagonism,” he said. “We oppose war. We hope to have equality, a win-win situation with the mainland.”
So after all the pirouettes and pyrotechnics, the KMT was playing a sad, but powerful, trump card: the fear of mainland China. The election was supposed to be Taiwan’s moment of truth, when the island’s 23 million people decided freely how to move beyond the era of longtime President Lee Teng-hui. But Taiwan is trapped in a paradox: even as it takes exuberant steps on its own–establishing greater freedom, wealth, and cultural identity–it cannot escape the long shadow of Beijing. China’s leaders still consider the island a “renegade province,” the last piece of their reunification puzzle. Less than a month before the election, Beijing threatened that it will invade Taiwan if its leaders refuse to sit down and negotiate. For all the issues raised in the raucous three-way race–crime, corruption, development, governance–Beijing has managed to turn many voters’ attention back to the perils of the cross-strait relationship. “I have never felt so intensely the urgency of these issues,” says Lee Yuan-tseh, Taiwan’s lone Nobel laureate. “I am deeply concerned about whether Taiwan will rise or fall.”
No matter what happens, this election marks the end of the one-party system that has governed Taiwan for the past 50 years. In the first democratic election, in 1996, Lee Teng-hui–the KMT-appointed incumbent–was never in danger of losing. But due to a bitter split in the KMT, caused when ex-KMT stalwart James Soong left to make an independent run at the presidency, the outcome of this election is utterly unpredictable: according to polls, the top three candidates–Lien, Soong and opposition leader Chen Shui-bian–are in a dead heat with about 25 percent of the vote each, while the remaining 25 percent are undecided. With such an evenly split electorate, whoever wins may have to form alliances with other parties. A weakened presidency may be good for democracy. But will the new leader have the power to govern–much less handle the dragon across the strait?
Beijing always seems to breathe fire around the time of Taiwanese elections. In 1996 the People’s Liberation Army fired missiles into deserted islands across the Taiwan Strait. This time Beijing resorted to paper missiles, in the form of an 11,000-word white paper warning that the mainland will invade if the island’s new leaders “indefinitely delay” negotiations for Chinese reunification. (The other three conditions that would lead to China’s attack: foreign invasion, a declaration of independence and internal chaos.) President Jiang Zemin followed up with threatening words. A few days later PLA leaders vowed to invade Taiwan should pro-independence candidate Chen Shui-bian emerge victorious.
Even if it’s a bluff, Beijing may have succeeded in making voters think twice when they go to the polls. Its rhetoric will likely have the biggest impact on Taiwan’s older voters, especially those who have memories of the 1949 exodus from communist China. Both Lien and Soong are battling for those conservative voters who want nothing more than to preserve the status quo. Soong, who presents himself as a savior, promises to lead Taiwan away from confrontation with mainland China. “In Taiwan, the radicals don’t have a market,” Soong told NEWSWEEK, as he sped in his van between nighttime rallies. “We’re just buying time until China moves toward greater openness and a much more pluralistic society.”
Not everybody is so sanguine. In the southern city of Tainan, a 51-year-old man in grease-stained jeans listens to Chen, his favorite candidate, give a speech. “We are Taiwanese,” said the man, Kuo Teh-an, distinguishing himself from the 15 percent of the population who–like both Soong and Lien–were born on the mainland. “We have always been opposed to unification,” he said. “We are not afraid. If they want to come and fight, let them.” Chen, a pro-independence politician who has softened on the issue since becoming a candidate, does not want to appear so belligerent. But he is still defiant. “This election is the people of Taiwan choosing a future leader,” he says. “It is not the People’s Liberation Army choosing a future leader.”
Taiwan’s younger generation could turn the tide in this election–if they care enough to vote. One quarter of Taiwan’s electorate is under 30. These youth, whose strongest views are often reserved for which flavor of Starbucks coffee they prefer, are looking for new leaders–and an end to the corruption and boredom of KMT rule. Unlike older voters, they are less afraid of China. For them, the election is not about a standoff with the mainland, but about crime, corruption and charisma. That’s why few young Taiwanese support the stultifying Lien, preferring to support Chen (whose campaign throws good parties) or Soong (who has a populist touch).
The real race now will be for the huge bloc of undecided voters. Most of these are older voters, largely female, who have little education. In other words, perfect targets for that common practice: vote-buying. Chen, who has built his campaign on a pledge to wipe out the KMT’s bribery and patronage, accuses the ruling party of putting aside $1 billion to buy votes. The KMT denies such claims. But bribes could have a pivotal role in a tight race. No other party can compete with the KMT’s cash or social networks on the ground. The gifts, usually in cash, sometimes come as salad oils or scented soaps. Police say illegal gambling dens also mask vote-buying: put your money down on the den owner’s candidate and get a five-to-one return.
The candidates are also turning to symbols, rituals and superstitions to help them win. At rallies, candidates hold up an enormous radish because its name sounds like the word for “good luck.” Soong’s position on the ballot (No. 1) is considered fortuitous, as is Chen’s (No. 5), since that represents the year of the dragon, a symbol of good luck. In perhaps the strangest episode, a feng shui master claims in a new book that Lien hired him to check on the harmony of his father’s grave. (Lien says this is untrue.) The man, Lee Chien-chun, says he found a dark miasma emanating from a nearby tomb, which he says belonged to the Soong family. His alleged recommendation to Lien: plant pine trees behind the father’s tomb to “gather up the energy needed to protect his offspring.” Who knows, in a race as close and crucial as this, any edge could make the difference.
