Democracy in Taiwan

Officials in Beijing must have had a sense of relief after they learned that their favored candidate, the incumbent KMT presidential contender Ma Ying-jeou, won the 2012 Taiwan presidential election on January 14th, by a margin of 800,000 (52 percent vs. 46 percent) votes. However, that sense of relief might prove to be short-lived and premature.

Ma, a Harvard law school graduate, is widely regarded as a model scholar-official and not a risk taker. Although he is very handsome-looking and appealing to a lot female voters, he is not considered as charismatic or motivating as the opposition candidate. That probably partially explains why his winning margin shrank from more than 2 million votes four years ago.