Taiwan election: Ruling party candidate wins tightly contested presidential race, upsetting China's ambitions

Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate William Lai, also known by his Chinese name of Ching-te, has emerged victorious after a tightly contested presidential election as the island’s next leader, Fox News Digital confirms.

"The results are in, and Taiwan’s voters stood up to China and all its war talk of recent weeks," Gordon Chang, Gatestone Institute Senior Fellow and China expert, told Fox News Digital. "Free people, living just a hundred miles from the menacing Chinese state, refused to be intimidated."

Lai, defeated his rival, New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-ih of the Kuomintang (KMT) party, by just over 7% of the vote after Hou conceded at 8 p.m. local time. Taiwan saw around 69% of voters turnout for the election this year - less than the impressive 75% seen in the 2020 election, which saw 13.6 million people turn out to vote, but more than the 66% that turned out for the 2016 election, according to the Taipei Times.

The victory marks DPP's third successive win over KMT for the first time since Taiwan began democratic elections over 30 years ago - the first time a party has done so, with parties retaining control for no more than 8 years before switching places as voter sentiment swayed between the two major parties.

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"The voters broke a pattern that has held since the first democratic elections in Taiwan in 1996," Chang said. "The Democratic Progressive Party, the pro-Taiwan party, and the pro-China Kuomintang Party, have traded the presidency every eight years."

"Beijing insists the people of Taiwan are "Chinese." By voting for Lai, they have now loudly declared they are Taiwanese."

Fox News Digital spoke