China needs to respect Taiwan's popular will expressed in the island's presidential and parliamentary elections over the weekend and pursue dialogue, not confrontation, with what Beijing considers a renegade province under the Democratic Progressive Party leader Tsai Ing-wen. Tsai, for her part, should steer clear of straining the cross-straits relationship, as happened during the island's previous DPP rule.
Tsai's landslide win in Saturday's election makes her Taiwan's first female president when she formally takes office in May. Her victory comes on the heels of a rapid rapprochement between Taipei and Beijing under eight years of rule by the outgoing President Ma Ying-Jeou of the Kuomintang (KMT). Tsai's victory and her DPP's sweep of a majority in the Legislative Yuan, the first since the legislature's seats were opened for direct elections in 1992, may signal Taiwanese voters' repudiation of Ma's China-friendly policies.
That should not lead Tsai and the DPP to return to the hardline stance toward China taken by the previous DPP government under Chen Shui-bian from 2000 to 2008. After the election win, Tsai said she would try to "maintain the status quo for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait" to bring the greatest benefits and well-being to the Taiwanese people, while also warning Beijing that "any forms of suppression will harm the stability of cross-strait relations."