Leader of Taiwan DPP, party hated by China, leads last election poll

TAIPEI: The leader of Taiwan’s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), an organisation loathed by rulers in giant neighbour China, maintained her lead in the last opinion poll on Tuesday before a polling blackout begins ahead of the Jan 16 elections.

The poll by Taiwan’s Cross-Strait Policy Association showed 45.2 percent of 1,052 people surveyed supported Tsai Ing-wen, chairwoman of the DPP, while 16.3 percent backed Eric Chu, chairman and candidate for the ruling Nationalists (KMT).

The margin of Tsai’s expected victory is important in terms of how fiercely democratic Taiwan gets on with Communist-ruled China, which considers the island a breakaway province.

The DPP has been supported by youthful voters angered by a perceived economic dependence on the mainland.

The links between Beijing and the DPP will be crucial to managing one of the world’s most potentially dangerous relationships, with Taiwan facing a China that aims hundreds of missiles at the island and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under Beijing’s control.

The DPP is detested by Beijing because the party believes the future of Taiwan is for its 23 million people to decide, which Beijing takes to mean independence.

China has regarded Taiwan as a renegade province ever since Chiang Kai-shek’s defeated Nationalists fled to the island in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists.

The association’s poll showed 59-year-old Tsai’s approval rating over 54 percent for respondents aged between 20 and 34. However, it also showed that 22.4 percent of all respondents were undecided about their presidential pick.