On Saturday, voters in Taiwan will go to the polls to elect the state’s next president. The autonomous territory — officially known as the Republic of China, but unrecognized diplomatically by most countries around the world — has long been cast in the shadow of China and subsumed under Washington-Beijing relations.

In tomorrow’s contest, China is again a major dividing issue between the two main parties, the conservative, pro-unification Nationalist Party (KMT) and the left-leaning, pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP, the party of the current president, Tsai Ing-wen). The election is also playing out against the backdrop of the Hong Kong protest movement, with Taiwan watching nervously at how China rules Hong Kong under “One Country, Two Systems,” the same arrangement that has been promised to Taiwan should it unify with China.

To get a sense of the state of play in Taiwan, we spoke to Brian Hioe, a founding editor of New Bloom, an online magazine that covers political change and social movements in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China. We talked about Taiwanese history and politics, the strengths and weaknesses of left-leaning social forces in Taiwan, Taiwan’s relations with China and US imperialism, and much more.