Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen rises from the ashes with a hand from Hong Kong

TAIPEI - Heading into 2019, Tsai Ing-wen looked at risk of becoming Taiwan's first one-term president. Then came the unrest in Hong Kong.

What happens in Hong Kong, including the way Beijing responds to protracted unrest, matters for democratically run Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory. In Taiwan's last presidential election in 2016, Jamie Chiang voted for a candidate who promised a closer relationship with China. Come January, she will back Ms Tsai.

With an increasingly assertive Chinese leadership under President Xi - and a trade war threatening to split the world into competing spheres of Chinese and US influence - the presidential election is shaping up to be Taiwan's most consequential since its first in 1996. Ms Tsai has been vocal on the turmoil in Hong Kong, speaking at least once a week via Facebook and Twitter in support of the demonstrators. She was the first leader to express concern over the arrests of prominent Hong Kong opposition figures. In a Facebook post in August, she vowed Taiwan would never become like Hong Kong as long as she's president. And last week one of Hong Kong's most well known pro-democracy activists, Joshua Wong, visited Taiwan and met with the DPP chairman.

Since Ms Tsai came to power Beijing has curbed the number of mainland tour groups allowed to visit and banned individual tourist travel entirely. Around 40 per cent of Taiwan's exports go to China and about 400,000 Taiwanese work there.

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