When the islanders on the windswept Taiwanese archipelago of Matsu go to the polls this Saturday, Lii Wen, the enthusiastic young candidate for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, knows he has little chance of winning a seat. But he still considers his electoral race a victory.

Matsu’s 13,000-strong population will make their free choice between the DPP and opposition Kuomintang (KMT) parliamentary and presidential candidates within sight of China, where many have extended family in Fujian province, a few short miles away, who are not afforded the same rights.

“Merely by holding elections in Matsu, it’s a testimony to how Chinese culture and democracy are not incompatible and it’s not what some in the Chinese Communist Party would want people to think,” said Mr Lii.

Elections in Taiwan, an East Asian democracy of 23 million, are a joyful affair. After Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese Nationalist leader, fled the Communists and retreated to the island with his Kuomintang forces in 1949, he ruled mercilessly, pursuing critics and imposing martial law that was only lifted in 1987.