Taiwan candidate seeks to reassure US on China ties

Taiwan's opposition presidential candidate will look to reassure U.S. officials this week that victory in the January 2016 election for her party, which Beijing views with suspicion, won't revive tensions across the Taiwan Strait. AP reports.

Tsai Ing-wen will want to avoid a repeat of her experience with Washington before the last vote four years ago, when the Obama administration was widely perceived as weighing in against her.

The United States, which has legal commitments to help Taiwan maintain the ability to defend itself, has welcomed improved relations between the democratic island and the communist-governed Chinese mainland.

The incumbent Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou has pushed closer economic ties with Beijing, reducing the potential for conflict in a regional hotspot and making Taiwan less of a sore spot in relations between the U.S. and a rising China as the two powers vie for predominance in the Asia-Pacific region.

Tsai represents the Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP. When it last held the presidency from 2000 to 2008, then-leader Chen Shui-bian, advocated for constitutional independence for the island. Beijing has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, and has threatened to use force if it seeks independence.

Tsai has a milder stance and says she wants to maintain the status quo in relations. She is on a 12-day, six-city visit to the United States, and will have a chance in an address to a think tank Wednesday to lay out her vision of what that means.

"She will want to reassure people about what a Tsai Ing-wen presidency would look like: that it would be responsible and deal with China in a way that doesn't complicate U.S.-Taiwan relations," said Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

"She has to make her case, but on the other hand, the administration has to accept that she could be president and not unfairly tilt the scale against her," he said.

The U.S. denied taking sides in the 2012 election, but caused a storm in Taiwanese politics when months before that vote an unnamed, senior U.S. official was quoted as saying that the DPP leader had sparked concerns about whether she was willing and able to continue stable cross-Strait relations.

Tsai is better-placed to win the election this time around. With his second and final term drawing to a close, Ma's popularity has plunged, and his Nationalist Party, also known as the KMT, fared badly in local elections in November. It is unclear who will be its presidential candidate.

In a commentary Tuesday as the opposition leader arrived in Washington for meetings with lawmakers and administration officials, Tsai wrote that her strategy is to seek "robust economic, defense and people-to-people relationships with the U.S., in parallel with a comprehensive and principled engagement with China."

She stressed the need for transparency in engagement with the mainland. She said major protests in Taiwan last March against a trade agreement with China showed what can result "when the Taiwanese people feel they have been left out of the discussion." Activists had occupied parliament during the protests.

Daniel Russel, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, recently welcomed Tsai's visit and the opportunity to hear her strategy for managing China-Taiwan relations. He told reporters that the U.S. was also talking to Beijing and encouraging it to show "flexibility and restraint" in dealing with the leadership in Taiwan.

In a sign of the diplomatic sensitivities of visits by Taiwanese officials and politicians, the State Department has made no public announcement of who from the administration is meeting with Tsai.