Quotes of the Day

A few months ago I passed through the central Taiwan city of Taichung and had dinner with its refreshingly down-to-earth Mayor Jason Hu, a former Foreign Minister. Later that Saturday night, Hu, sans entourage, and I took an impromptu walk in a park in a gentrified neighborhood bustling with trendy new shops and eateries. While we strolled, grown-ups came up to shake Hu's hand, embrace him and wish him well, and children jostled to have their pictures taken with him. The atmosphere was jovial — it was clear that Taichung's citizens were very fond of Hizzoner. That's because Hu, a Kuomintang (KMT) stalwart who was first elected Taichung's mayor in 2001 when he defeated the independent incumbent and the candidate belonging to the rival Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), has turned the city around; he has built infrastructure, created jobs and sculpted Taichung into the island's cultural hub.

Hu is one major face of Taiwan's new politics. The other is his political associate Ma Ying-jeou, the big winner of the March 22 presidential election. Ma's victory is a landmark development that has the potential to not just change Taiwan but transform its fraught relationship with China. For decades after its leadership fled to Taiwan in 1949, the KMT regarded the island merely as a transitional base from which to reclaim the mainland. The KMT, an outsider, ruled Taiwan in an authoritarian manner, and was out of touch with local folk, who identified themselves as Taiwanese, not Chinese. In 2000, the KMT paid for its arrogance when it was stunningly — and deservedly — ousted from office by the upstart DPP, which drew strength from its Taiwanese base.

The KMT's eight years in the political wilderness turned out to be a blessing, Hu said to me, because it forced the party to reinvent itself — for the better. No longer did the KMT regard running Taiwan as its birthright; instead it started to address people's needs and concerns, and to earn, rather than command, their respect. The core policy of reunification with the mainland under the KMT, always a far-fetched idea, was put on the backburner. And old-guard mainlanders, who had run the party for so long, realized they had to give way to younger leaders such as Ma (who was born in Hong Kong and went to Taiwan when he was just 1) if the KMT were ever to regain power.

The one time I met Ma, it was clear he understood that Taiwan was punching below its weight and that it had to liberate its over-regulated economy to compete in a globalized world. He also recognized that Taiwan needed to acknowledge China's might. Now that he is President, Ma wants to launch direct transport links with the mainland, lift restrictions on Taiwan businesses operating in China and open the island to Chinese tourists and investors. As he told my colleague Michael Schuman: "We can make cross-strait relations work for both — a win-win situation."

It's an approach that benefits the entire region. Well-educated and well-spoken, Ma excites the Chinese diaspora in a way not even China's best and brightest do. On election night, I was watching the results with my wife on a Taipei cable channel in our Hong Kong home when the doorbell rang. It was our neighbors, a Taiwan family — husband, wife and their two children; they didn't have Taiwan TV and wished to follow the election on ours. As Ma pulled away from his opponent Frank Hsieh, the voice of the anchorwoman was drowned out by their cheers. The following morning my family and I joined a group of mainland, Indonesian and Singaporean Chinese friends for a hike; they went on and on about how wonderful Ma was.

Ma is enough of a politician to know he cannot be a change agent all by himself. There are myriad ways he can stumble. His pledge to improve people's livelihoods will be hard to fulfill. On cross-strait initiatives, he requires Beijing to go along, and, within his own party, he has to walk a tightrope between competing factions. But Ma should be able to lean on the KMT-controlled legislature and, in a bid to heal the island's divisions between the two main parties and between mainlanders and Taiwanese, he has reached out to the DPP, acknowledging its contribution to Taiwan's democracy.

Indeed, that's the most heartening aspect: the triumph of democracy in a small corner of what China considers to be its inalienable territory. The people spoke and were heard, and a peaceful transfer of power took place, setting an example for the Chinese world. Taiwan's rough-and-tumble politics has a juvenile side — endless bickering that often descends into fisticuffs. Now, anger and animosity have yielded to hope and possibility. That, above all, is the essence of the new Taiwan.

• Zoher Abdoolcarim