TAIPEI, Taiwan, March 22, 2008
Taiwan's Ruling Party Loses Election
Opposition Candidate Wins Presidency, Promises Closer Ties To Mainland China
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Taiwan's opposition Nationalist Party president-elect Ma Ying-jeou gestures after winning Taiwan's presidential election in Taipei, March 22, 2008. Ma cruised to victory promising to expand economic ties with China while protecting the island from being swallowed up politically by its giant communist neighbor. (AP Photo/Wally Santana)
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Frank Hsieh, presidential candidate of Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party, bows to supporters after losing, March 22, 2008, in Taipei, Taiwan. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
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Fireworks lit up the sky over Ma Ying-jeou's headquarters, and cheering supporters put up victory posters before the former Taipei mayor climbed on stage and declared victory.
"People want a clean a government instead of a corrupt one," said Ma, also a former justice minister. "They want a good economy, not a sluggish one. They don't want political feuding. They want peace across the Taiwan Strait. No war."
Across town, a crying crowd gathered at the campaign office for ruling party candidate Frank Hsieh, a former premier.
"Don't cry for me today," Hsieh said in his concession speech. "Although we lost the election, we have a more important mission. The torch of democracy should not be extinguished."
Ma won 58 percent of the votes compared to 41.5 percent for his challenger, according to the Central Election Commission. Turnout was 76 percent, the commission said.
Ma and Hsieh have both said they want a less confrontational relationship with China. But they were divided on how best to deal with Beijing, which presents both a huge opportunity for the island's powerful business community and a looming threat to its evolving democracy.
Ma said he favors stronger economic ties between China and Taiwan, but that he wants to maintain the status quo politically. Therefore it is less likely that there will be a political unification, CBS News correspondent Barnaby Lo reports.
His main proposal is for China and Taiwan to have a so-called "One-China common market," reports Lo. It is patterned after the European Union where there is a free-flow of people and products.
Such a union could mean laborers, travelers, flights and goods would pass more freely between China and Taiwan.
Taiwan and the mainland split amid civil war in 1949, but China still considers the island to be part of its territory. Beijing has threatened to attack if Taiwan rejects unification and seeks a permanent break.
The Central Election Commission also said two referendums calling on the government to work for the island's entry into the United Nations failed. China had warned that the referendums threatened stability in the region.
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Ma has based his campaign on promises to reverse the pro-independence direction of outgoing President Chen Shui-bian and leverage China's white-hot economic boom to re-energize Taiwan's ailing high-tech economy.People want a clean a government instead of a corrupt one. They want a good economy, not a sluggish one. They don't want political feuding. They want peace across the Taiwan Strait. No war.
Ma Ying-jeouHe has proposed a formal peace treaty with Beijing that would demilitarize the Taiwan Strait, 100-mile-wide waterway that separates the two heavily armed sides. But he has drawn the line at unification, promising it would not be discussed during his presidency.
Economically, he wants to lower barriers to Taiwanese investment on the mainland - it already amounts to more than $100 billion - and begin direct air and maritime links between the sides.
Ma is particularly interested in expanding the China-Taiwan high-tech connection, which every year sends billions of dollars' worth of Taiwan's advanced components to low-cost assembly plants along China's rapidly developing east coast.
That interest resonated with businessman Wang Wen-ho, who cast his ballot for Ma at a Taipei high school.
"The DPP has failed to cope with China's growth in eight years," he said. "We need to engage the mainland to improve the economy."
But George Tsai of Taipei's Chinese Culture University said improved relations with China will likely come slowly.
"Even if Ma can manage to resume cross-strait dialogue and build mutual trust with Beijing, it probably will not happen in the first two years," Tsai said.
Hsieh has accepted his party's independence platform, but without the special vehemence of Chen, whose support for separatist policies constantly incensed China and caused grave concern in the United States, Taiwan's most important foreign partner.
Hsieh's party had used the last day of campaigning to fan outrage over China's handling of protests in Tibet, warning the crackdown could be replicated in Taiwan.
He also had warned voters that if he loses, Ma's party will control both the presidency and the legislature, creating a dangerous imbalance of power.
Taipei voter Chen Wei-ting, a 32-year-old banker, shared the same concern and voted for Hsieh. "I'm worried that if one party had the legislature and presidency, there could be a lot of trouble."
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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See all 21 CommentsPosted by tbweb at 07:12 PM
You can bet there are plenty of illegal taiwaneezees here in the U.S.
Don''t worry, if Taiwan was bordered on the U.S. you''d be telling a different story.
Did you or are you considering moving to Taiwan?
Posted by rushlimpdrug at 09:59 PM : Mar 22, 2008,,,
I think you got it wrong, if Taiwan was on the border with the U.S. it would be the other way around, many Americans would be trying to sneak into Taiwan, not necessarily to live there permanently but just to go there. Like many Americans I visited many foreign countries but after a while the newness wears off and you start to miss all the things home, become home sick as they say, food, family, friends, TV, movies, language communications, just the U.S. environment in general. Like the saying goes, its a nice place to visit but I wouldn''t want to live there!
the Taiwanese would honor U.S. Borders like the Canadians and you wouldn''''t have 12 million illegal Taiwanese invading the U.S. across the Border!
Posted by tbweb at 07:12 PM
You can bet there are plenty of illegal taiwaneezees here in the U.S.
Don''t worry, if Taiwan was bordered on the U.S. you''d be telling a different story.
Did you or are you considering moving to Taiwan?
Posted by tbweb
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Sounds like reverse-racism. Instead of according negative attributes to all of a ethnicity, you are applying only positive ones. Surely there might be a lazy representative from Taiwan you can lambaste?
Posted by hypnotoad72 at 06:06 PM : Mar 22, 2008,,,
U.S. Law Enforcement reports there are over 30,000 illegal Mexican gang members in the U.S. committing serious crimes and those behind bars are creating havoc in U.S. Prisons at much Tax Payer expense. The U.S. has a large Taiwanese population in the U.S. now here legally, mostly professionals and business types and are so quiet you wouldn''t even know it. When compared to the illegal Mexican immigrants I don''t consider it reverse racism just an obvious fact when you compare the 2 cultures. The Taiwanese have their criminals like every culture but nothing on the level of the illegal Mexican gangs and I would even go further and state that if Taiwan was on the border with the U.S. instead of Mexico, the Taiwanese would honor U.S. Borders like the Canadians and you wouldn''t have 12 million illegal Taiwanese invading the U.S. across the Border!
Posted by tbweb
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Sounds like reverse-racism. Instead of according negative attributes to all of a ethnicity, you are applying only positive ones. Surely there might be a lazy representative from Taiwan you can lambaste?
Get ready Canada!
Posted by rushlimpdrug at 04:34 PM : Mar 22, 2008,,,
I''ve been to Taiwan, they are very friendly, hard working and hardly any crime. The Taiwanese would be welcome immigrants in any nation.
Well, to the degree that MA can successfully interact with Chinese officials, the better off the citizens of Tiawan and the rest of southeast Asia will be!
Posted by stn_sage at 03:43 PM
Boy are you naive.
Meanwhile, we can expect a larger influx of taiwaneezees into America and other countries.
Get ready Canada!
We don''t want to be in the position where we constantly must be prepared to repell an invasion of the mainland Chinese into Tiawan! We simply couldn''t do it without tremendous loss of life!
Therefore, if they can cooperate and work things out, it''s to their benefit---and the world''s---that they do so!
"Taiwan''s Ruling Party Loses Election"
And this is a surprise to?
The real news and story won''t get reported.
Cause we can''t handle the truth.
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Joseph Stiglitz gave us inside scoop on what the IMF and World Bank were up to...
The ''world economic system'' today is just the instrument of our financial elites. Far more so than the KKK, it is an "Invisible Empire"...wherein things are run through a paper money system where exchange rates are manipulated to the benefit of the insiders and their accomplices...for instance, both the yen and the yuan were kept artificially low to the benefit of investors in Japan and then China, respectively. Ihe benefits that accrued to the rentier classes came at the expense of the American working and middle classes.
Internationalism is being pushed for its own sake, but as a system of economic control of the peoples of this earth. The Soviets divided production of elements of finished goods among several republics so that none of them could ''go it alone.'' In a sense this is what is being done by their successors... we saw that in the first Gulf War when key missile parts were only manufactured by Japan--and in Japan they were considering not supplying them.
This new economic system is not something that has evolved in any kind of putative free market...it was created by international elites so as to have complete control of the world economically and can then proceed with political unification. cont.
In my opinion I think the World is at a crossroads and eventually will move in one of two directions. Right now the World is moving in 2 directions simultaneously and its being torn apart because the 2 directions are not compatible! For example in one direction the World is as it always was, nationalistic in orientation and business is conducted in that way. The new direction, Global Economics; if the World continues in this direction it will eventually dissolve nationalistic motives and nations as well, there will be no United States, China or Russia in the traditional sense, only economic interest and Brand names. With anyone being able to trade and invest in any market, people from all over the World will be more interested in a return on their investments than national interest. If someone from anywhere in the World has invested heavy in a Chinese company, that investor will want that Chinese company to do well and not fail because its home nation is having issues with China. In many ways Global Economic interest hae already trumped national interest. I don''t think the 2 can co-exist!
we are ever improving our ability to break down
bedroom doors, cart off Iraqis-of-intreast,
cordon off areas, retrieve body parts and win
hearts and minds by shaking the hands of
kids whose parents want us dead.
This should really ready us for a 5-million
man army which just might be better equiped
than to come at us with machine-gun-mounted
Toyota pickup trucks.
And, when the Clintons gave the keys to Los Alamos and the Canal Zone to the Red Chinese... you can rest assured it wasn''t for a few measly campaign contributions...it was in exchange for sweated cut-rate labour that could low-ball any working class in the world.
While we may not be on a gold standard...the same forces are at work today.
The highlighted quote can be said of any country''s inhabitants regarding their country too.
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