Chinese flood Tsai Ing-wen’s Facebook, demanding return to China

A motley group of mainland netizens waged a social media war against their Taiwanese counterparts to denounce the poll victory of Taiwan’s President-elect Tsai Ing-wen, but got lost in “enemy territory” and were finally defeated by their own state censors.

“Our democratic way of life is forever the resolve of Taiwan’s 23 million people”, she said.

“We will, in a new session of the legislature, put forward the Cross-Strait Agreement Oversight legislation as a priority to highlight our interest in peaceful and stable relations with China”, Joseph Wu, the DPP’s secretary general, said in a speech at a Washington think tank. “We sincerely urge Your Excellency to consider the issue of Tibet as one of the core issues of new government in Taiwan under your leadership”, he added. He attributed this response to two factors: the DPP decision not to target China in its campaigning, and Beijing having months to resign itself to the DPP taking power.

The report made no direct mention of Saturday’s Taiwan election.

The People’s Liberation Army’s Unit 31 – based in the southeastern Chinese port city of Xiamen, adjacent to the Taiwan’s Kinmen Island – conducted landing exercises that involved amphibious attack vehicles, fighter jets and long-range rockets, China Central Television said Thursday. Her victory comes on the heels of a rapid rapprochement between Taipei and Beijing under eight years of rule by the outgoing President Ma Ying-Jeou of the Kuomintang (KMT).

The sides have agreed since 1992 on a “one China” policy, in which both governments claim sovereignty over mainland China and Taiwan, but crucially neither recognizes the other’s legitimacy.

However, the president-elect said throughout her campaign she would avoid upsetting China and not try to break away legally to back up the island’s de facto autonomy. The DPP is likely to interpret the massive mandate it received in the just-concluded elections as support for its pro-independence policies.

“What they are saying is that something close to “One China” has to come out of Tsai Ing-wen’s mouth eventually”, Shelley Rigger, a professor specializing in Taiwanese politics at Davidson College, told the Christian Science Monitor. And it hardly needs to be said that what happens with Taiwan has great significance for stability in East Asia. To top it off, Ma had a historic meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore last November.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, which leads cross-strait negotiations for the mainland, did not respond to a request for comment. “But the younger generation are excited to have a woman leader for the country”.

As a result, the term “presidential election” is never used in state media, and “Taiwan region” is employed instead of “Republic of China”.

China’s Foreign Ministry was more pointed in their statement, with spokesperson Hong Lei enlisting the aid of the rest of the world in preventing any move toward “Taiwan independence”.

“I voted for DPP, because it’s very critical time for the Taiwan people”.