• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Ma Ying-jeou

Taiwan's second democratic transition of ruling party followed the March 22, 2008, presidential election, which went decisively (58%) to KMT candidate Ma Ying-jeou. Together with the KMT legislative victory 2 months earlier, Taiwan now had a unified government under KMT control.

The January 2012 contest for president pitted President Ma Ying-jeou of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) against his main presidential election rival, Tsai Ing-wen of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), along with People First Party (PFP) presidential candidate James Soong. According to some polls, by early December 2011 Ma and Tsai were no longer locked in a tight race as they had been in previous months, with Ma starting to take the lead, while Soong remained a distant third.

Taiwan’s 14 January 2012 presidential campaign was dominated by domestic issues. The wealthiest 20 percent were more than six times richer than the poorest 20 percent, the widest gap since 2001. Ma’s Nationalists were trying to close the wealth gap with a tax on expensive property, luxury cars and jet airplanes. His government seeks to develop six new pillar industries, including solar energy and high-value agriculture.

The first of two televised presidential candidate debates was held 03 December 2011. The other took place 17 December, while a vice presidential candidate debate was held 10 December 2011. During the televised presidential debate, the KMT's Ma said the "1992 consensus" had kept cross-strait relations stable and should remain the basis for conducting peace talks with China. The ruling Kuomintang (KMT) describes the "1992 consensus" as a tacit understanding reached between the two sides of the strait that "there is only one China, with each side free to interpret what that means." The KMT's Ma accused the DPP's Tsai of failing to recognize the "1992 consensus," a move that Ma said will destabilize Taiwan's ties with China.

Fundamental to the "1992 consensus" is that both Taiwan and China should put political issues aside to proceed with substantive cooperation in fields such as trade. "The 1992 consensus is the best approach for a win-win situation," he said. "Cross-strait relations will become unstable without the acknowledgment of it -- which is dangerous for the Taiwanese people."

Responding to Tsai's argument, Ma said she has never clarified what her "Taiwan consensus" means. An ambiguous policy, the "Taiwan consensus" will add uncertainty to cross-strait relations, which will be to Taiwan's disadvantage, Ma said. Only his principle of "no unification, no independence, and no use of force," along with the "1992 consensus," can solve cross-strait problems, he added. Meanwhile, People First Party (PFP) presidential candidate James Soong said that if elected, he will make it clear to Beijing that it should respect "the willingness of the people of Taiwan to maintain the cross-strait status quo."

Taiwan's incumbent president, Nationalist Ma Ying-jeou, easily won a second term in elections on 14 January 2012, giving him four more years to improve relations with China. His Nationalist Party also controls parliament. Ma beat opposition leader Tsai Ing-wen by more than five percent. His victory was seen as a mandate to keep peace with Beijing while managing wealth-distribution issues at home. The president, who was first elected in 2008 on pledges to shore up ties with China and reap gains from its massive markets, won re-election with nearly 6.9 million votes. His administration said that victory after a tense campaign will lead to more deals with China on trade and economic cooperation.

President Ma looked largely to Taiwan’s old political rival China for trade, transit and investment deals that could propel the island economy. The two sides have signed 18 accords, boosting two-way trade to $100 billion in the first 10 months of 2012. The government expected 2012 economic growth to come in at less than 2 percent, slower than original forecasts. Officials point to a weak global economy, which in turn cools demand for Taiwanese exports such as machinery and consumer electronics.

On January 13, 2013 tens of thousands of people marched in Taipei in an unusually large rally against the island’s president. Organizers placed the protest head count at 150,000, though outside estimates put the figure closer to 50,000. By early 2013 a poll by local television network TVBS found the president’s approval rating just 13 percent, the lowest since he took office.

The "Sunflower Movement" was an expression of the insecurities and misgivings prevailing at the grassroots level of Taiwanese society about the speed and breadth with which the Ma administration fast-tracked cross-strait relations. The fuse that set off this movement was the Ma government when it tried to ram the Cross-Strait Service and Trade Agreement on trade in services through the legislature, in violation of the negotiation mechanism between the ruling and the opposition parties.

The students' seizure of the legislative chamber followed the KMT's unilateral passage of a services trade agreement signed with China in Shanghai in 2013. Passage of the pact came during a first reading without bipartisan deliberation on March 17. The protest was the biggest student-led protest in Taiwan's history. It was also the first time that the legislature has been taken over by protesters. Despite official accusations of violence and irrationality levelled at the activists, a public majority rallied behind the movement, with between 350,000 and 500,000 people participating in a March 30 rally in Taipei.

The protests were among the island's most divisive since Ma came to power six years earlier, promising to build closer economic ties between China and Taiwan, former antagonists in the decades-old Chinese civil war. According to Ma's government, the pact, which focuses on services, is an essential step to further liberalize cross-Strait trade and will provide select businesses with wider access to China's market. The protesters said that the negotiations lacked transparency and that the deal may enable China to exert more influence over Taiwan's economy and politics. Some opponents also feared that growing Chinese clout in self-ruled Taiwan may undermine the island's democratic system.

Ma's approval ratings at home had sunk, hovering in the teens and low 20s for much of 2013. Only halfway through his second term, there were concerns both for Ma and China's leadership that the political tide in Taiwan could be shifting away from Taipei's ruling Nationalist Party. Taiwan holds legislative elections on 29 NOvember 2014, and what Ma hoped to accomplish through the historic talks with China was the appearance of a breakthrough in relations. The political risk was that if the Ma Ying-jeou administration handled it well, it may well boost his popularity and help to achieve better results in the important parliamentary and local elections, and if he failed, and if he mishandled these meetings and so on, this may become a point of criticism picked up by the opposition and adversely affect the electoral fortunes of his Kuomintang.

Ma was expected to step down in early 2016 after serving two consecutive terms, and given the political situation in 2014, it was quite likely that the Democratic Progressive party, the opposition party, would win the presidential race. Should the outcome of the local elections improve the DPP’s chances to make a comeback as the ruling party in 2016, Beijing will most likely step up pressure on Taipei. Voters supporting the Kuomintang-driven blue camp and the DPP-driven green camp remained largely unchanged through a decade of elections.