Taiwan’s next presidential election is a year away, but Lai Ching-te, the ruling party’s vice president and likely nominee, begins the campaign to convince the US that he is a safe pair of hands.
On Sunday, President Tsai’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party elected Ing-wen Lai as its leader after Tsai resigned as party leader after the DPP’s defeat in local elections. With Tsai’s hold over her party weakened well before her last term as president ends next year, DPP politicians expect Lai to become the party’s undisputed candidate to succeed her.
That brings into focus a man virtually unknown outside of Taiwan and often referred to as a “deep green” — short for more radical pro-independence leanings — who is heading for an even more tumultuous year in relations over the United States amid China’s unprecedented military threats against Taiwan anticipates Taiwan Strait.
In recent opinion polls, Lai trails just behind Hou Yu-ih, the popular mayor of the country’s largest municipality by the Kuomintang (KMT), the more pro-China opposition party. But Lai is seen as the clear winner of a presidential race if the KMT nominates its chairman, Eric Chu.
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“The United States doesn’t know Lai as well as we knew Tsai when she ran for president because he hasn’t held any significant national positions before prime minister and vice president,” said Bonnie Glaser, executive director of the Indo-Pacific program at German Marshall Fund of the USA.
Unlike Tsai, a trade lawyer who helped negotiate Taiwan’s entry into the World Trade Organization before running for office, Lai’s main focus is on the South, the pro-independence heartland. A doctor by training, he served as legislator and mayor of Tainan, a DPP stronghold, before becoming prime minister in 2017 and vice president in 2020. Lai’s career was boosted by his charisma and uncompromising push against hog barrel politics.
But perceptions of him abroad have been shaped by the fact that he once described himself as a “political worker for Taiwan independence.” Lai later added the attribute “pragmatic”. But the damage was done.
“There are concerns in Washington about his experience and that of his advisers in international affairs or cross-strait affairs,” said Ivan Kanapathy, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former National Security Council official at the Trump White House. A US government official said it was “difficult to be reassured when you hear him declare that Taiwan is an independent nation.”
Lai has repeatedly stated publicly that Taiwan is a sovereign, independent country and included this in his talking points at closed-door meetings with foreign counterparts.
However, both DPP politicians and foreign observers with in-depth knowledge of Taiwan warn against reading this language as a signal of intentions to officially declare independence – a move on which China has threatened war.
Lai’s stance is consistent with the position the DPP has held for more than 20 years, a position that has made it eligible for mainstream voters: that there is no need to declare independence because the country is already independent , and that its future must be determined by the Taiwanese people.
“The concern that Lai is pro-independence stems in part from a lack of understanding of Taiwan’s domestic political discourse,” said Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, a lobby group. “The concern that many express about him reflects a more latent concern about the dark green every time an election is due. To be fair, Lai has been playing in that pool but he’s becoming more cautious now.”
Tsai is a case in point. After visiting Washington in 2011 during her first presidential bid — which she lost to incumbent KMT Ma Ying-jeou — the Obama administration expressed doubts that it might be unwilling or unable to stabilize cross-strait relations keep.
But since taking office in 2016, Tsai has won Washington’s confidence with a more circumspect approach to China and more reliable communications with the US than most previous Taiwanese leaders, while US-China relations deteriorated amid Beijing’s growing belligerence. “Taiwan was considered the questionable player at the time, but now it’s about containing China,” said an American observer who has been involved in Taiwan politics in the past.
The vice president is already trying to make his mark internationally and allay US concerns.
In recent months, Tsai has sent him on a number of trips abroad and included him in more national security meetings. Lai has developed a relationship with Sandra Oudkirk, the US deputy ambassador to Taiwan.
“He understands that as mayor he could express his own views, but as president he would be constrained by other boundaries,” said a person who advised him on external relations. “He knows he has to do it [be] more pragmatic, and that’s how we now see an evolving Lai Ching-te.”
But while the vice president sticks closely to Tsai’s line on China affairs, there are differences in tone.
In meetings with US counterparts, including a delegation of former officials sent to Taiwan by US President Joe Biden last March, Lai has called on America to end its ambiguous stance on whether it would come to the aid of Taiwan if the country would be attacked by China – a wish that many would participate in Tsai’s administration, but avoid expressing yourself too openly.
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Biden has repeatedly said the US would defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack, but the White House appears to have kept Washington’s position ambiguous, saying its policy has not changed.
Lai’s comments that Taiwan is an independent country also differ slightly from Tsai’s, who usually promises to defend its sovereignty and also mentions the ROC, the country’s official name, which is taken as confirmation that it deems a formal declaration of independence unnecessary.
Those nuances might be enough to keep Washington’s concerns alive.
“US-China policy is in flux, and Taiwan policy will be more low-key as the Biden administration tries to find ways to work with the Chinese,” Hammond-Chambers said. “It’s possible that there will be a sharp, direct conversation with Lai at some point.”