Taiwan held the equivalent of a midterm election on Saturday. The results were brutally disappointing for President Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) – so disappointing that Tsai almost immediately resigned as head of the party, although she remains president of Taiwan.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met on Friday with a delegation of Taiwanese that included Lien Chan, the former chairman of the Kuomintang party (KMT), which is currently the opposition but ran the country until the year 2000. Supporters of the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) complain that the trip to China undermines President Tsai Ing-wen, whose election two years ago enraged mainland China and prompted it to begin an aggressive campaign of diplomatic and economic isolation against Taiwan.

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