Tokyo congratulates Taiwan’s Tsai on victory

The visit by DPP secretary general Joseph Wu, who leaves for Washington on Monday, comes after an increasingly assertive China warned Taiwan in the wake of the election to abandon its “hallucination” about independence.

The DPP has traditionally backed independence for the island, but it is widely acknowledged that Ms Tsai campaigned for the presidency by moderating party rhetoric and promising to maintain the status quo.

The DPP also won a large majority in Taiwan’s national legislature, with about double the number of seats as the outgoing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which had cultivated closer ties to China during its time in power.

Tsai swept aside her China-friendly rival Eric Chu of the Nationalist Party that had ruled Taiwan under president Ma Ying-jeou since 2008. And that, he says, underscores, president-elect Tsai’s need for caution in managing relations with China.

For its part, China, which in 1996 threatened Taiwan’s first democratic election of its president with missile exercises, should take the outcome of the election as a cue that either political and military pressures or economic interests alone would not sway popular sentiments in Taiwan.

Until the new law is passed, it would be hard to do anything related to China, she said.

China’s official Xinhua news agency said that without peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan’s new leader “will find the sufferings of the people it wishes to resolve on the economy, livelihood and its youth will be as useless as looking for fish in a tree”. Illustrating the extent of their defeat, the Nationalists had won 64 seats four years ago. “We haven’t worked hard enough and we failed voters’ expectations”, Mr Chu said. He followed his concession speech by making a long bow.

As her country’s new leader, Tsai spoke to the Taiwanese people about her hopes to bring together country’s people and their lawmakers.

Stable and favorable ties between China and Taiwan matter a lot for security in Asia.

Major principles and policies concerning southeast China’s Taiwan Province are consistent and clear, and will not change after the results of the island’s elections held on Saturday, according to the mainland’s Taiwan affairs authority. While that policy put both China and the USA at greater ease, Taiwanese voters anxious over dependence on their giant, Communist-run neighbour overwhelmingly elected a party that officially supports separating from the mainland.

Student protesters occupying Taiwan’s parliament to stop the government from ratifying a contentious trade pact with China on March 21, 2014 vowed to take further action after the government failed to respond to their ultimatum.