When the Barbie doll was unfailingly blonde, it was still made in Taiwan. Since then, the wayward island has climbed many places on the value scale. But so has the People's Republic of China.
Taiwan, that old “Asian tiger”, grew a rheumatic 1.42% last year. To compensate for this, its political class is roaring ahead of the presidential and legislative elections this Saturday. The Republic of China – its official name – will have to choose “between democracy and authoritarianism,” warns the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (PDP). “Between war and peace,” protests the tireless Kuomintang from the opposition.
World hegemony could one day be settled in the Strait of Formosa. Something that has distressed, since the pandemic, the electronics industry, which largely depends on 'Made in Taiwan' semiconductors for sophisticated products like the iPhone, which is still assembled in China.
However, more than geopolitics or macroeconomics, it will be the pocketbook that will determine the vote of the Chinese in Taiwan tomorrow. Everything indicates that many of the young people who four and eight years ago voted en masse for the “independence” president, Tsai Ing Wen, this time are going to turn their backs on the PDP and its vice president and candidate, Lai Ching Te.
The minimum wage barely exceeds 800 euros in Taiwan, where the working day is one of the longest in the world. In view of this and rental prices, it is not surprising that the birth rate is among the lowest in the world.
The potential beneficiary is the third in the running, Ko Wen Je, former mayor of Taipei. Although Lai was leading the polls nine days ago – deadline – somewhat ahead of Hou Yu Ih, of the Kuomintang. Far, yes, from the 56%-57% that his predecessor achieved.
With less than half of the votes and deputies, the winner will have as difficult a time justifying a change of direction as maintaining the lack of communication with Beijing, which lasts eight years.
The belligerence of the American ally already skyrocketed with Donald Trump, but it has been Joe Biden who has sent senior officials who have not set foot in Taipei since 1979, the year the embassy was moved to Beijing. Xi has also hardened his stance: “Reunification is inevitable.”
In any case, China continues to absorb more than 35% of Taiwan's exports. Hence the fear that Beijing will reinstate tariffs on more than 500 products, in retaliation for parallel restrictions. To which we must add Tsai's incentives to divert production to Southeast Asia and the US.
Despite its anti-communist background, the Kuomintang presents itself as an interlocutor for Taiwanese companies – which assemble, when not manufacture, in China – and affirms that it will activate the opening of services to continental companies, stopped a decade ago by the occupation of Parliament. .
