Taiwan leader gets election boost from China

TAIPEI (AP) — A year ago, Taiwan’s leader was on the ropes.

Then she got a boost from an unexpected corner: Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Polls indicate that President Tsai Ing-wen is poised to win a second four-year term on Sunday, a remarkable turnaround for a leader whose future was in doubt after voters dealt her Democratic Progressive Party a major loss in November 2018 local elections.

Since then, Tsai has capitalized on three developments: the fears generated by China’s tough words on Taiwan, protests in Hong Kong that have reinforced those fears and US government actions that reassure voters that America will have Taiwan’s back if the going gets tough.“

All the factors that help Tsai Ing-wen are happening: the China factor, the US factor and the Hong Kong protests,” pollster You Ying-lung, chairman of the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation, said at a news conference late last month.

A victory for Tsai and her independence-leaning party would likely herald continued tensions and a further souring of relations with China, which considers self-governing Taiwan a renegade province.

Her main opponent, Han Kuo-yu of the Nationalist

Party, won the mayor’s race in the Democratic Progressive Party stronghold of Kaohsiung in the 2018 local elections and held a comfortable lead over Tsai in early 2019.

Tsai began chipping away at his lead in the spring and pulled ahead for good in August.

She was the clear leader by the end of the year, according to an aggregation of polls by The News Lens, an independent youthoriented media outlet.