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Taiwan’s main opposition parties have made individual bids to unseat the ruling Democratic Progressive Party after the billionaire founder of Apple supplier Foxconn dropped out of the presidential race hours before the nomination deadline last Friday.
A possible alliance aimed at raising the prospects of a pro-China government did not materialize. The plan was announced last Wednesday, but failed live on local television on Thursday. Candidates from the more established Kuomintang and the smaller Taiwan People’s Party could not agree on a leader for a combined candidacy.
Last week’s drama would appear to strengthen the position of the ruling PDP government, which has been leading independent opinion polls for the election. The president and vice president of Taiwan are directly electedHe will serve a four-year term and may be re-elected for an additional term.
China’s Taiwan affairs office has characterized the choice of the autonomous island as a choice between “peace and war, prosperity and decline.” This election comes when China escalation of military activity in the Taiwan Strait and other nearby waters as Beijing presses its sovereignty claims over an island it considers its own.
Taiwan’s elections begin a year plagued by numerous global elections at a time of high geopolitical tensions while two major wars continue. President Joe BidenTrump’s re-election bid ends in 2024.
Taiwan election outcome likely to influence Influencing testy US-China ties and impact security in the Asia-Pacific region more broadly.
chinese president Xi Jinping He told Biden that Taiwan has always been the “most important and sensitive” issue in China’s relations with the United States, according to a reading in english of the Chinese Foreign Ministry of the two leaders first bilateral meeting in a year on the sidelines of the recent APEC leaders summit in San Francisco.
Biden has pledged to defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion by China, irritating Beijing. Last year, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, becoming the highest-ranking US official to visit the island in more than two decades. His trip was one of the reasons why communication between the world’s two major powers was interrupted before a tentative resumption just a few months ago.
These are the three parties that will participate in the January 13 elections in Taiwan to elect a new president.
Democratic Progressive Party
Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s vice president since 2020, is the ruling DPP’s presidential candidate for the 2024 elections.
Hsiao Bi-khim, educated at Oberlin College and Columbia University, who recently served as Taiwan’s envoy to the United States, is the vice presidential candidate on the DPP ticket.
After Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen met with then-House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy in April, Beijing again sanctioned Hsiao, banning her and her family members from entering the mainland, while which prohibited financial investors and other institutions that had worked with Hsiao from working with the mainland. entities.
Lai and Hsiao are running to succeed incumbent Tsai, who is not running due to term limits. Lai and the DPP have consistently topped opinion polls, although the gap between Lai and second-place candidate Ko Wen-je has been slowly narrowing in recent months.
Beijing views the DPP as separatist because the party’s fundamental goal of establishing Taiwan as “a sovereign, independent and autonomous nation” runs counter to Beijing’s claims to the island.
Taiwan People’s Party
Ko is the chairman of the TPP and its presidential candidate for the 2024 election. Ko has a medical background and was most recently mayor of Taipei, Taiwan’s largest city and capital, from 2014 to 2022.
Ko Wen-je, presidential candidate of the Taiwan People’s Party, consistently ranks second in opinion polls.Sam Yeh / AFP – Getty Images
Cynthia Wu, his vice presidential candidate, is a Wellesley College alumna and the eldest daughter of prominent Taiwanese business leader Eugene Wu, founding chairman of Shin Kong Group.
Ko consistently ranks second in various opinion polls. Some observers say failure to reach a combined formula with the Kuomintang could split the opposition vote and strengthen the ruling DPP.
Kuomintang Party
Hou Yu-ih is the KMT presidential candidate. He was previously director general of Taiwan’s National Police Agency and current mayor of New Taipei City, the larger municipality that includes the main Taipei City area.
Hou Yu-ih, mayor of New Taipei City, is the presidential candidate of the opposition Kuomintang.Sam Yeh / AFP – Getty Images
He named prominent local television personality and talk show host Jaw Shaw-kong as his vice presidential candidate. Jaw is also president of Taiwan’s China Broadcasting Corporation.
Hou has consistently trailed both the DPP’s Lai and the TPP’s Ko in third place in several opinion polls, although the 66-year-old was just re-elected mayor of New Taipei a year ago by a landslide.
Referring to the Chinese formulation of these elections, Hou reiterated on Saturday his party’s warning to the Taiwanese people that voting for the DPP would likely lead to war with the mainland.
Retired: Terry Gou, Independent
Hours before nominations closed, Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn, withdrew his presidential bid after failing to broker a deal between opposition parties.
Gou has consistently trailed his rivals in opinion polls despite a Taiwan-wide publicity campaign after launching an independent bid for the Taiwanese presidency in August.
Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of Apple supplier Foxconn, withdrew his independent presidential bid at the last minute.Annabelle Chih/Getty Images
It has kept a low profile after the Chinese state-owned company Global Times reported on October 22 that China was investigating Foxconn’s activities in several provinces. There were some signs in other reports that Chinese authorities might have been concerned that his candidacy could split the opposition vote.
“As I leave this presidential race, my determination to bring change to Taiwan remains strong. Taiwan needs to stop, restart, restart,” Gou said Friday in a statement, where he did not clearly indicate the reason for his withdrawal. “We need a change in the ruling political party to bring about change in Taiwan.”
While remaining coy about his future plans, Gou was explicit in his criticism of Tsai and the DPP leadership when he launched his presidential bid, accusing them of taking Taiwan’s economy from prosperity to the “brink of a cliff” as a result of their perception of incompetence.