Taiwan's Choice: China or the United States?

He warned young voters about the potential danger of voting for the DPP because the party had “called for Taiwan independence and advocated hating and resisting China.”

“Peace cannot be taken for granted. It requires the people to make the right decision,” Gou said.

And after China launched another large-scale military exercise around Taiwan following Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy, Chen believes the KMT will try to frame itself as the only party that can help achieve peace across the Taiwan Strait.

“Since China now sets some prerequisites for which Taiwanese politicians or political parties can interact with them, the KMT will keep doubling down on the claim that they are the only political party that can maintain exchanges with Beijing,” Chen said.

“However, Tsai’s trip has rekindled Taiwanese people’s concerns about the confrontation between democracy and autocracy and offered them a reason to fall in line with the DPP. This may help the DPP to get a head start in the preparation for the 2024 presidential election,” Chen concluded.

Taiwanese People Worry About Cross-Strait Peace and Security
While some experts suggest the DPP’s narrative of choosing between “democracy and autocracy” may resonate with more Taiwanese voters, some Taiwanese people told DW that they think the most important issue for them in the upcoming presidential election is peace across the Taiwan Strait and Taiwan’s own security.

A survey examining Taiwanese people’s view on the former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last August shows that a majority of Taiwanese respondents believe Pelosi’s trip was detrimental to the island’s security, and the surveys also suggest a considerable number of Taiwanese voters are concerned about entrapment by the US.

“A majority of KMT supporters and independents believed that Pelosi’s visit had made Taiwan less secure, while a majority of DPP supporters felt the opposite was true,” according to the authors of the survey, which was released by the American think-tank Brookings Institute on April 5.

Competing Narratives
With the recent trips by Tsai and Ma helping to strengthen the confidence of DPP and KMT’s political base, some experts say independent voters may become the decisive factor in the 2024 presidential election, and they are the group of people that both parties will try to win over.

“Independent voters are not really aligned with either the KMT or the DPP, and they are the group of people that the two parties will be fighting for narratively,” said Lev Nachman, a political scientist at the National Chengchi University in Taipei.. “Both parties will accuse the other for bringing potential catastrophe to Taiwan and both are going to claim that they are the ones defending Taiwan’s best interests.”

And as the war in Ukraine continues, Chen from Soochow University told DW that the KMT and DPP will continue to amplify their competing narratives of “Taiwan should avoid upsetting major powers in the world” versus “Taiwan should keep strengthening defense because autocrats are irrational.”

“The two mainstream arguments will continue, but it’s hard to determine which narrative will have the upper hand right now,” he said.

William Yang is East Asia correspondent for DW in Taipei.This article is published courtesy of Deutsche Welle (DW).