Asia | Taiwan’s election

Across the Taiwan Strait, another lockdown protest

Taiwanese voters give the Democratic Progressive Party a kicking

Supporters of Taiwan Kuomintang party Taipei city mayoral candidate Wayne Chiang cheer in Taipei, Taiwan, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2022. Lingering concerns about the threat posed by its giant neighbor China took a backseat in Taiwan''s closely watched local elections on Saturday as voters focused on other pressing issues closer to home such as air pollution and bad traffic. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

Nov 29th 2022|TAIPEI and TAOYUAN

The kuomintang (KMT) is one of the few remaining Taiwanese institutions to hold that China and Taiwan are one country. And the party of Chiang Kai-shek, which fled to the island in 1949 after its defeat by Mao Zedong’s Red Army, has suffered for that anti-independence position. Polls conducted in the run-up to Taiwan’s local elections on November 26th found that most Taiwanese believed they had a separate cultural identity from China. Support for independence was at nearly the highest level on record, while support for the KMT was at 14%, a record low.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Across the Strait, a lockdown protest”