TAIPEI: President Tsai Ing-wen has won a landslide victory over China-friendly opposition challenger Han Kuo-yu to clinch a second term in Taiwan’s presidential election, dealing a blow to Beijing, which has long sought to bring the democratically run island under its control.
Han conceded defeat just before 9pm at his headquarters in the southern city of Kaohsiung. Tsai had a record 7.7 million votes, the Central Election Commission said, to 5.2 million for Han.
Tsai said it was time for Beijing to stop making threats toward the island.
"Peace means that China must abandon threats of force against Taiwan," she said at a news conference in Taipei after he results were known.
"I also hope that the Beijing authorities understand that democratic Taiwan, and our democratically elected government, will not concede to threats and intimidation.”
Analysts had widely expected a win for Tsai after she backed Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests and oversaw a robust economy despite the US-China trade war.
The outcome of saturday’s vote will reverberate far beyond Taiwan’s borders after a campaign where the main topic of debate was how close the self-ruled island should tack to its giant neighbour.
Beijing views Taiwan as part of its territory and has vowed to retake the island one day, by force if necessary.
But China is also Taiwan’s largest trade partner, leaving the island in a precariously dependent relationship.
Tsai pitched herself as a defender of Taiwan’s liberal values against the increasingly authoritarian shadow cast by Beijing under President Xi Jinping.
“We hope our citizens can come out to vote to exercise their rights and make Taiwan’s democracy stronger,” she told reporters after voting in Taipei on Saturday morning.
Han, 62, favours much warmer ties with China — saying it would boost Taiwan’s fortunes — and accuses the current administration of needlessly antagonising Beijing.
He has cast the election as a choice between “peace or crisis” with China, adopting the slogan “Taiwan safe, people rich”.
The Tsai victory is expected to infuriate Beijing, which has made no secret of wanting to see her turfed out. But in the end, China’s belligerence in recent years appears to have played into the incumbent president’s hands.
Taiwan has long been a potential flashpoint between China and the United States, which remains the island’s main military ally.
Tsai rejects Beijing’s view that Taiwan is part of “one China”.
In the four years since she won a landslide victory, Beijing has tightened the screw, severing official communications with her administration while ramping up economic and military pressure.
It also poached seven of Taiwan’s few remaining diplomatic allies, hopeful that its pressure would convince voters to punish Tsai at the ballot box.
But that campaign appears to have backfired, especially in the last year after Xi gave a particularly blunt speech stating Taiwan’s absorption into the mainland was “inevitable”.
Analysts say Tsai’s ability to seize on the Hong Kong protests, along with Taiwan’s largely successful economic navigation of the US-China trade war, boosted her fortunes.
Last year, her party also pushed ahead with legalising gay marriage — a first for Asia. While the move angered conservatives and many older Taiwanese, it reinvigorated Tsai’s youth base.
A supporter of President Tsai Ing-wen holds a banner during a rally outside the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) headquarters in Taipei on Saturday evening. (Reuters Photo)