Voters spurned Beijing’s repeated calls not to vote for Lai, delivering a comfortable victory for a man China’s ruling Communist Party sees as a dangerous separatist.
Lai Ching-te of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) vowed to defend the island from China’s “intimidation” and on Sunday the island’s foreign ministry told Beijing to accept the result.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls on the Beijing authorities to respect the election results, face reality and give up suppressing Taiwan in order for positive cross-strait interactions to return to the right track,” it said in a statement.
What your getting at is in my opinion, the core of the matter. It’s really an issue of shared decisions. Each side is trying to position themselves to get the lion’s share of them. The truth is, regardless of Taiwan and China call themselves one or separate, ultimately it will always be an issue of what decision each side gets to make. In many ways we see that playing out in the US/China relationship as well.
TSMC isn’t really that important. Without TSMC and US interference, China would have just chugged along anyway. And we are seeing even with US interference, China’s plan is to just chug along. It’s the US that keeps bringing up TSMC because as you mentioned, it’s a decision that’s getting more and more out of US’s ability to make decisions on.