Kharis Templeman is a research fellow and part of Hoover’s Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region. He spoke to Chris Herhalt about Taiwan’s next steps after its people elected Lai Ching-te to succeed Tsai Ing-wen as the island nation’s president. He also spoke about the risk of military confrontation between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China, energy problems, and domestic policy challenges in Taiwan.
Chris Herhalt: President-elect Lai Ching-te has said his administration is willing to entertain “healthy and orderly” cooperation with the mainland, but only if Beijing renounces any intention of using military force against Taiwan. Is this a workable approach?
Kharis Templeman: Well, it depends on what you mean by workable. Will it keep the peace? Potentially. That is the bottom line. That’s the most important thing. Will it re-establish formal channels of communication across the strait? No. I know that because Tsai Ing-wen has said essentially the same thing ever since the first day she became president, and that was not good enough for Beijing. The general consensus in Taiwan is that if Beijing could not work with Tsai, they certainly won’t be able to work with Lai. If anything, he’s less moderate than she is on cross-strait issues.
Herhalt: Lai’s pick for vice president, Hsiao Bi-khim, was Taiwan’s representative to the United States. What do you think that choice signifies?
Templeman: It was a politically astute choice, for a couple of reasons. One is that Lai Ching-te himself does not have a high international profile. He doesn’t have much experience in international affairs, and he doesn’t speak a whole lot of English. That was a significant weakness of his profile as president, so Hsiao Bi-khim shored up that part of his image. The other reason it was politically astute is that Lai is from what is traditionally known as the deeper green wing of the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), the one that is more nativist, a bit more skeptical of China, a bit more pro-independence. Hsiao Bi-khim is from the other wing of the DPP that’s much closer to Tsai Ing-wen. So, it was a kind of unity ticket in the sense that we had people from both parts of the party.
Hsiao is younger, has a very good international profile, and she’s a woman, and so she complements some of Lai’s strengths. The DPP really struggled with the youth vote in this latest campaign, so this choice was an attempt to shore up Lai’s support with younger voters as well.
Herhalt: China’s military continuously violates Taiwan’s sovereignty on the air and in the sea. Is this done just to degrade Taiwan’s ability to respond—causing wear and tear on aircraft, equipment, and people—or is something else going on?
Templeman: There’s a political logic to it. Beijing wants to compel Taiwanese leaders to say and do things consistent with Beijing’s position on Taiwan. So, they want to compel Tsai Ing-wen, for instance, to accept some version of the One China principle, which states that Taiwan is part of China and that the two sides belong to one country and they have an obligation to work together toward eventual political unification. Tsai was not willing to say that when she came into office, and so Beijing uses these incursions as a kind of punishment of her administration and also of any other person who sympathizes with those views.
So, it’s done in a way that’s highly visible, highly symbolic. You notice that these things happen almost every day and they’re done in a way that gets reported on and gets a lot of attention. They’re also done with impunity. So the Taiwanese Air Force sends up planes to challenge incursions into their ADIZ [Air Defense Identification Zone], but the ADIZ itself is actually a contested issue and it’s not on a firm international-law basis; it’s a convention that’s been in place since the 1950s. Beijing is effectively saying, “We can unilaterally alter the status quo and we will, unless you give in to our demands.”
Herhalt: What is the likelihood that the Chinese Communist Party will attempt some form of major military intervention of Taiwan in the next two to five years?
Templeman: I can give you my position on that. I think the chance of a use of military force to try to compel unification under terms that Beijing favors is pretty unlikely in the next five years, but it’s not zero. And the reason it’s not zero is that Beijing looks as if it may actually have the capability, or at least they’re approaching the point where they have the capability, to contemplate a full-on military invasion of Taiwan—even if not only Taiwan but also the United States committed fully to resisting. It’s that shifting military balance of power across the strait that is really raising concern.
Herhalt: In the chapter of Silicon Triangle that you co-wrote, you refer to this idea that Taiwan’s exports of microchips are so important to the United States that it would be forced to intervene if China invaded, much like earlier US foreign interventions that were sometimes characterized as ensuring a steady supply of oil. Is this a fair characterization?
Templeman: I think it’s an important part of the conversation today, but Taiwan’s importance to the United States far outweighs the chip issue. It goes back to before silicon chips were even a thing, when the United States was still in a position where we would intervene to keep Taiwan out of the hands of the PLA [People’s Liberation Army].
We had made a historical commitment to defend Taiwan that goes back to 1950. We effectively intervened at the onset of the Korean War to prevent Taiwan from falling into the hands of the Chinese communists, and we then became responsible for Taiwan’s defense against the communist threat. And we’ve basically been there ever since. The inconvenient fact of our de-recognizing the Republic of China and recognizing the People’s Republic of China is that at the same time we also committed, in an ambiguous way, to maintaining the cross-strait status quo. Or at least maintaining the peace across the strait, in the form of the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. So, the US commitment to Taiwan far precedes the rise of chips as a major issue in this relationship.
Herhalt: I was intrigued to find out that at one point during the Taiwanese campaign, the hashtag #TaiwanElection was number one on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo. And then, obviously, the censors had to come and remove it. But it hit almost 200 million impressions, so any power user of Weibo for a period of time would have seen it. What do you make of this Chinese awareness of the actual functioning democracy in Taiwan? Does it move the needle at all in China?
Templeman: It’s really hard to answer with any sort of data. We have anecdotes like the one you just mentioned, where there is a kind of latent interest in what happens in Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party has a compelling reason to try to censor that or shape the narrative about elections in Taiwan in a way that is in their own interests, but there is an inherent curiosity about Taiwan among many Chinese.
I can speak on a personal note. Chinese people who come to Stanford are often very interested in engaging with our program and learning more about Taiwanese politics, because it presents a kind of alternative future for the People’s Republic of China. Taiwan is a Chinese-speaking society, it shares a cultural heritage, and it’s in many ways a sort of inspirational story of a country that was under a Leninist, one-party regime, that transitioned to democracy, and now has vibrant, colorful elections—and also is richer than any part of mainland China today. So, Taiwan is a kind of proof that you don’t need the Communist Party running things to have a prosperous, free, democratic Chinese society.
Herhalt: As you described in Silicon Triangle, Taiwan’s president-elect is pledged to continue phasing out nuclear energy. You suggest that’s unwise. Can Taiwan avoid power shortages while continuing to phase out nuclear and increasing the share of domestic energy production intended to produce chips?
Templeman: That’s a really tough question for the next president. I think it can, but the most plausible way to do that is to further increase importation of hydrocarbons—either oil, coal, or increasingly, liquefied natural gas [LNG]—as their main source of energy. And that’s a huge security vulnerability. Especially LNG: Taiwan doesn’t have a large domestic supply, and it has a back supply of only ten to twelve days. If there were an interruption of imports, Taiwan could go for less than two weeks before facing an energy crisis. It would have to switch to alternative supplies.
Now, they have a much larger back stock of coal, and since their imports of petroleum are largely going into the petrochemical industry, you could divert some of that. But overall, Taiwan is highly vulnerable to a blockade that ends or at least disrupts the importation of energy from abroad and could quickly bring the economy to its knees. So, Taiwan has worries on both the demand side—a growing demand for energy to produce chips—and on the supply side. The shift away from nuclear and toward renewables has not filled the gap that needs to be bridged to make Taiwan more resilient and able to hold out against disruption of its overseas supplies.
Herhalt: Now that Taiwan’s presidential election is decided, what comes next?
Templeman: I’ve been trying to track very closely what Beijing has said and done toward Taiwan, and so far, at least, its reaction to the election results has been fairly muted relative to what it could have been. I interpret that as Beijing viewing the results as a trend in the right direction. So, while Lai’s DPP retained the presidency, its candidate won only 40 percent of the vote, whereas Tsai Ing-wen won more than 57 percent four years ago, so it’s a steep drop from where she was. In addition, the DPP lost the majority in the legislature, so the opposition will be able to block things that the DPP wants to do during the next four years. Those two things suggest to Beijing that it doesn’t have to give up on peaceful unification as a potential future for Taiwan. Beijing’s nemesis, in the form of the DPP, is actually struggling; it’s down a bit from where it was four years ago, and there are at least some coalition-building possibilities Beijing can work with.
The new legislature has already taken office, even though the president will not be inaugurated until May 20. And the legislature seems to be under the control of the KMT [Kuomintang], while the TPP [Taiwan People’s Party], which holds a handful of seats, seems to be positioning itself as a kind of junior coalition partner of the KMT rather than a partner of the DPP. So that means that Lai Ching-te is going to have a pretty challenging domestic situation as soon as he takes office. He’s going to have to find ways to reach across the aisle and work with the opposition to get anything done.
