TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan's opposition candidate cruised to victory in the presidential election Saturday, promising to expand economic ties with China while protecting the island from being swallowed up politically by its giant communist neighbor.

Fireworks lit up the sky over Ma Ying-jeou's headquarters, and cheering supporters put up victory posters as they waited for the former Taipei mayor to give a victory speech. Across town, a crying crowd gathered at the campaign office for ruling party candidate Frank Hsieh, a former premier.

Ma won 58 percent of the votes compared to 41.5 percent for Hsieh, according to the preliminary count by the Central Election Commission.

A ruling party spokeswoman, Hsieh Hsin-ni, told supporters, "We are accepting this defeat."

Ma and Hsieh have both said they want a less confrontational relationship with China. But they were divided on how best to deal with Beijing, which presents both a huge opportunity for the island's powerful business community and a looming threat to its evolving democracy.

Taiwan and the mainland split amid civil war in 1949, but China still considers the island to be part of its territory. Beijing has threatened to attack if Taiwan rejects unification and seeks a permanent break.

The Central Election Commission also said two referendums calling on the government to work for the island's entry into the United Nations failed. China had warned that the referendums threatened stability in the region.

Ma has based his campaign on promises to reverse the pro-independence direction of outgoing President Chen Shui-bian and leverage China's white-hot economic boom to re-energize Taiwan's ailing high-tech economy.

He has proposed a formal peace treaty with Beijing that would demilitarize the Taiwan Strait, 100-mile-wide waterway that separates the two heavily armed sides.

But he has drawn the line at unification, promising it would not be discussed during his presidency.

Economically, he wants to lower barriers to Taiwanese investment on the mainland — it already amounts to more than $100 billion — and begin direct air and maritime links between the sides.

Ma is particularly interested in expanding the China-Taiwan high-tech connection, which every year sends billions of dollars' worth of Taiwan's advanced components to low-cost assembly plants along China's rapidly developing east coast.