Ryan Hass
As the May 20 inauguration of William Lai as Taiwan’s next president approaches, prepare for an anticipable wave of news analyses predicting escalating tensions and potential conflict on the horizon. Lai famously referred to himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence.” And since Beijing has threatened to go to war to prevent Taiwan independence, so the thinking goes, Lai’s inauguration could spell impending trouble.
Such analysis is easy to write and almost certainly wrong. Lai is not a wild-eyed zealot with a one-track-minded focus on Taiwan independence. He is a professional politician who has organized his career around becoming Taiwan’s president. Now that he has ascended to Taiwan’s top elected position, he will want to win reelection. To do so, he almost certainly will need to tack to the center of Taiwan’s political spectrum rather than cater to the wishes of a small minority of Taiwan voters who favor throwing caution to the wind in service of Taiwan independence or unification. Indeed, less than 6 percent of Taiwan’s voters support “the immediate pursuit of independence from, or unification with, the People’s Republic of China.”
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