China Won’t Leave Taiwan’s Election to the Taiwanese

Taiwan is headed into a close election on Saturday, and China is determined to influence the outcome. Some of Beijing’s tactics are heavy-handed, such as the January 9 threat of sweeping new trade restrictions against Taipei, or the barrage of balloons that drifted over the island beginning last week. Others are by turns sinister and pedestrian—even slightly ridiculous, as might be said of a reported Chinese investigation into a Taiwanese rock group for lip-synching, which authorities on the island charge is politically motivated.

China has long made a habit of harassing Taiwan before the island votes, but is not nearly so practiced at election subversion as, say, Russia. What Beijing does in Taiwan, which it claims as its own, is likely a bellwether in a year when more than 60 countries around the world are holding elections, many of which Beijing would surely like to sway.

“It is an established fact that Taiwan in last week. “Should China succeed in shaping the outcome of voting in Taiwan, it will apply the same tactics to other democracies to promote its preferred international order.”