What did Taiwanese voters think of former president Ma’s visit to China?

On March 26, Taiwan’s longtime ally Honduras formally cut off diplomatic ties to establish a relationship with the People’s Republic of China.

On March 29, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (Cài Yīngwén 蔡英文) headed to Central America on a trip that lasted until April 7, punctuated with “transit stops” in New York and Los Angeles.

Her stops in the U.S. drew ire from China, especially on April 5, when Tsai met with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Los Angeles. In retaliation, China carried out military exercises in the waters around Taiwan from April 8 to 10.

But while these tensions played out in the Taiwan strait, and amidst ever more panicky media speculation about China launching a full-scale attack on Taiwan, another notable Taiwanese political figure was taking a trip: Tsai Ing Wen’s predecessor Ma Ying-jeou (Mǎ Yīngjiǔ 馬英九), who was president of Taiwan from 2008 to 2016. Ma flew to Shanghai’s Pudong airport on March 27, and departed from Pudong on April 7.

Mixed feelings in Taiwan about Ma’s trip to China

Just as Tsai’s stops in the U.S. were ostensibly for logistical reasons, Ma’s visit to China was not presented as a political event — he described it as a “personal” visit, and there were no official engagements with the P.R.C. government organizations. Ma’s journey coincided with the Qingming Festival which is celebrated by ethnic Chinese across Asia and serves as a time to commemorate ancestral tombs.

During his 12 day trip, Ma paid his respects at his family’s tomb in Xiangtan, about 35 miles south of Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. He traveled to five cities — Nanjing, Wuhan, Changsha, Chongqing, and Shanghai, accompanied by a delegation of former aides and more than 30 students.

But just as Tsai’s “stopovers” were a convenient excuse for a political visit, Ma’s trip included meetings with a variety of Chinese government figures, even if these events were not billed as official: On March 30, he met with Sòng Tāo 宋濤, the head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, and on April 5, he met Communist Party Secretary of Shanghai Chén Jíníng 陳吉寧.

It was the first trip by a former president of Taiwan to visit China since China’s civil war ended in 1949. Taiwanese had mixed feelings about the trip: In a survey carried out by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation (TPOF) 39.2% of people in Taiwan approved of Ma’s journey, with 43.7% expressing negative views, presenting his journey as a betrayal of Taiwanese interests.

Those who supported Ma’s visit want to maintain dialogue with China. Dr. Fred Li (李克明 Lǐ Kèmíng), the founder of the Center for Global Sustainable Application of Confucianism and Daoism at Soochow University in Taiwan told The China Project that “Ma’s visit gives all peace-loving people in Taiwan hope that there is an alternative to the massive military building and possible military conflict within the Taiwan Straits.”

Li said the visit “shows to people in mainland China that there are still people in Taiwan who are against the DPP administration’s de-sinicization.”

Alienated millennial voters

But, for DPP supporters, the visit was a betrayal and a reminder of Ma’s previously controversial ties with China.

Many associate Ma with the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) and subsequent Sunflower Movement. The CSSTA treaty between China and Taiwan was signed in June 2013 and sought to liberalize trade in the service industries. However, it was heavily contested through the Sunflower Movement (太陽花學運), during which protestors voiced concerns that KMT had attempted to ratify the treaty undemocratically and would leave the island vulnerable to political pressure from Beijing.

At the time, Ma was president of Taiwan and the chairman of the Kuomintang and therefore was largely viewed as the face of the agreement by protestors who criticized the KMT’s attempts to push the deal to the legislative floor without giving it a clause-by-clause review, despite contracts with the DPP in 2013 making the review a part of the procedure.

Protests against the agreement led to the occupation of the Legislative Yuan (Taiwan’s unicameral legislature) for 24 days from March 18 to April 7, the first such demonstration in Taiwan’s history. Protesters also occupied the Executive Yuan (the offices of the executive branch) on March 23 of 2014, which led to 61 arrests following a 10-hour eviction process that saw excessive force that led to 150 people being injured.

Ma’s association with the aggressive handling of protestors and the undiplomatic handling of the CSSTA left a bad taste in the mouths of many of Taiwan’s millennials.

Are young voters moving to new parties?

But Taiwan’s Gen-Z voters and young millennials have no distinct memories of the Sunflower Movement, removing the emotional motivation that pushed millennials away from the KMT in the 2010s.

This doesn’t mean Taiwan’s youngest voters are shifting to the KMT perspective however. Instead, their views are becoming more nuanced. More attention is being directed toward Taiwan’s other parties, such as Taiwan’s People Party (TPP), which was created in 2019 by former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲 Kē Wénzhé) to “become an alternative” to both the pan-Green and pan-Blue coalitions.

Local elections in November 2022 saw 20-29-year-old voters as the most vigorous supporters by far of the TPP’s Ann Kao (高虹安 Gāo Hóng’ān) in Hsinchu City, and the TPP-backed (and now TPP member) Vivian Huang (黃珊珊 Huáng Shānshān) in Taipei.

Changing Taiwanese identity

In the previously mentioned TPOF poll, 40% of the 20-34 year old demographic supported Ma Ying-jeou’s visit, and one of their biggest points of criticism was the language Ma used while speaking about Taiwan. On his second day in China, Ma visited the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing, where he gave a speech stating that, “People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are Chinese people and are both descendants of the Yan and Yellow Emperors.” In his later conversation with Song Tao, Ma stated that mainland China and Taiwan share a “common inheritance of blood, language, history, and culture.”

Even his activities while in China held subtle references to KMT stances. In the image shown above, Ma went into the Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum’s “ear room” or side room after paying his respects, where Ma wrote the inscription “Strive peacefully struggle and revitalize China” (hépíng fèndòu, zhènxīng zhōnghuá 和平奋斗、振兴中华) in calligraphy. The use of the term zhōnghuá 中华 instead of zhōngguó 中国 is notable; zhongguo is the term used mainly for geographic China, zhonghua puts more emphasis on the cultural or national significance of China, in turn providing space for both China and Taiwan’s definition of what China is.

While Taiwan is still officially the “Republic of China,” for young voters, Ma Ying-jeou’s continuous use of this name and his emphasis on the shared identity between China and Taiwan is unpopular amongst Taiwanese youth who are the product of a push over recent years for a Taiwan-based identity.

When Taiwan came under the KMT in 1945, the government initially promoted traditional Chinese culture such as calligraphy and folk art. But this movement took place under the 38-year-long consecutive martial law period between 20 May 1949 and 14 July 1987, which saw the denial of the right of assembly, free speech and publication in Taiwanese Hokkien, a language and ethnic identity on the island.

Since 1987, concerns about sinicization creating an environment of prejudice and racism against the local Taiwanese Hokkien and indigenous Taiwanese population led to de-sinicization efforts from both civil society groups and government organizations. This was not without its controversies, for example some Taiwanese historians downplayed the abuses of Japan’s colonial administration early on in Taiwan’s de-sinicization movement in the late 80s and 90s, referring to it as “rule” rather than “occupation.”

This distancing from a Chinese identity now sees a mere 2.7% of the population in Taiwan identifying as Chinese, 31% identifying as Taiwanese and Chinese, and a little over 63% identifying as Taiwanese. As a result, Ma’s visit is viewed through the more wary eyes of a generation that is emotionally farther from China than ever before.

One young DPP voter who talked to The China project on the condition of anonymity pushed against the peace narrative presented during Ma’s visit: “Our relationship is always a fake issue, China’s endgame is to make Taiwan legally a part of the PRC. The only question is which method they will use to achieve the goal.”

The need for a new strategy

Ma Ying-jeou’s visit comes right as Taiwan begins gearing up for its 2024 presidential election which is set to be particularly pivotal. But opinion polls find support for both main parties hovering around 25%, with the rest uncommitted to either party. Ma’s visit aligns with the KMT’s promises of prosperity and peace, the DPP on the other hand seem to be leaning even more into the independence narrative with Lai Ching-te (賴淸德 Lài Qīng dé), current vice president and DPP nominee, reaffirming Taiwanese sovereignty. But unlike the KMT, the DPP now must make a harder sell: that preserving independence comes with sacrifices.

Previously the DPP could comfortably rely on its stance against China to win over young voters. Now they will likely need to shift in the upcoming presidential election to bring back those young voters moving towards parties outside the DPP-KMT binary. It learned this lesson the hard way in the local elections last year, which saw Tsai Ing-wen stepping down as the DPP’s chairperson following a meager win of five cities and counties, the party’s worst performance since its founding in 1986.

The DPP made the mistake of recycling their 2020 “resist China, protect Taiwan” rhetoric during the 2022 local elections, which did not land with voters who view the issue of Chinese intimidation as separate from daily life. KMT and other pan-blue mayors elected in 2018 proved efficient administrators and in the 2022 elections, the pan-blue coalition banked on narratives that directly affected Taiwanese people’s bread-and-butter lives, such as accusing the Tsai administration of lacking transparency and being incompetent during Taiwan’s COVID-19 efforts.

Ma Ying-jeou’s visit to China may not be the catalyst for a shift in cross-strait relations, but the reactions to the visit by Taiwanese voters show that a change is taking place within Taiwan itself. Taiwan’s youngest voters are turning to new political avenues; they are no longer reeled in by the same political slogans that grabbed the attention of millennials and older voters, and once-strong political figures like Ma Ying-jeou have faded in memory.

The KMT and pan-blue coalition can no longer solely bank on the emotional shared ties between China and Taiwan to win new voters, and the DPP and pan-green can no longer exclusively run on fighting the “China threat.” Ma Ying-jeou’s visit, while attempting to build a bridge with China, may have landed with older generations, but does not seem to hit home quite as much for the younger population that holds Taiwan’s future in their hands. Instead, it is time for new figures to rise and adapt to changing identities and expectations for political leadership.