(LR) Ke Wenji, Hou Youxi, and William Lai are in a three-way leadership battle
On January 13, Taiwan will elect a new president in a key election that could redefine its relationship with China.
The Chinese government has long claimed the Taiwan Autonomous Region is an independent province, and uncertainty over Taiwan’s elections has been widespread since the first elections in 1996.
This year’s election campaign to replace incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen comes as Taiwan has emerged as a key flashpoint between the United States and China. Geopolitics aside, low wages and rising housing prices are among the domestic issues weighing heavily on voters.
The current vice president of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is participating in the vote. He has a narrow lead in opinion polls, followed by a former police chief who is running for the main opposition party, the People’s Party. The former mayor initially upset the calculations in a winner-take-all race, but now he appears to be far behind. Parliamentary elections are held on the same day, with each voter casting one vote for his or her constituency and one vote for the general seat.
Here’s a closer look at the three presidential candidates and their running mates.
Most likely candidate: William Lai Chin-te, Democratic Progressive Party
image source, Getty Images
He may be soft-spoken, but Taiwan’s 64-year-old vice president is a staunch defender of the island’s autonomy, and China’s state-run newspaper Global Times has accused him of violating Beijing’s anti-secession law. They are even calling for prosecution.
During her tenure as President Tsai’s premier from 2017 to 2019, Lai described herself as a “pragmatic activist for Taiwan’s independence.”
Rai’s father died in an accident when he was two years old. He says watching his mother raise six children on her own helped develop his strong work ethic. He received his medical training at Harvard University, where he worked as a kidney doctor until joining the civil service in Taiwan in the mid-1990s.
He initially served as an assemblyman for the southern city of Tainan. He was elected mayor in his 2010 year and remained mayor in 2014 with an unprecedented 73% of the vote.
He remains the current front-runner by a narrow margin, with a recent poll by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation (TPOF) showing him at 38%, just 1% ahead of Hou.
Lai has repeatedly said during his presidential campaign that Taiwan wants to “become friends” with China. “We don’t want to be enemies. We can be friends. And we [would] “I love seeing China… enjoying democracy and freedom just like the rest of us,” he told Bloomberg in August.
But his running mate Xiao Bikim, which seems to further infuriate Beijing. She was born in Japan and raised primarily in the United States, cementing ties with Taiwan’s strongest ally, which is also China’s toughest diplomatic relationship.
China called Hsiao a “hard-core Taiwan independence separatist.” The Chinese government has twice sanctioned the high-profile diplomat from entering mainland China, and has also banned investors and companies associated with her from working with mainland organizations.
Mr. Hsiao brings a wealth of foreign policy experience to Mr. Lai. The 52-year-old has served as Taiwan’s representative to the United States for the past three years. She was the first woman to take on this role.
When it comes to national strategy, she calls herself a “cat warrior,” a rebuttal to the bellicose “wolf warrior” style of diplomacy that the Chinese government encouraged until recently.
“Cats are much more adorable than wolves. The key to diplomacy is making friends,” she told The Economist last month. “It’s about learning to love yourself.”
Quiet person: Hou Yuxi, Kuomintang
As a child, Mr. Hou supported his family’s business by catching pigs and helping with the pork stall at the local market.
The 66-year-old once said the skills he developed while raising pigs helped him build a career as a police officer. He helped arrest high-profile murderers and was the lead investigator in the 2004 assassination attempt on former President Chen Shui-bian.
The former police chief turned to politics in 2010 and became mayor of New Taipei, Taiwan’s most populous city, in 2018. He was re-elected in a landslide in 2022. Mr. Hou is a competent police officer, and his track record as a popular mayor has propelled him to the position of mayor. He is the leading candidate for the Nationalist Party, which aims to regain leadership of Taiwan for the first time in eight years. Mr. Hou initially struggled to gain support, but has been rising in opinion polls since the Kuomintang’s unsuccessful bid to co-elect him with another opposition candidate.
Although Mr. Hou opposes Taiwan independence, he has largely avoided expressing his stance on China during this election campaign. This lack of clarity has drawn him criticism. At a university forum in June 2023, he dodged questions about his One China policy, which recognizes only one Chinese government in Beijing, raising questions about his ability to manage dangerous diplomacy.
“The relationship between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is clear. There is no need to confuse it…It is completely based on the constitution of the Republic of China,” he said at the time.
National Party vice presidential candidate joe shocon He is a prominent political commentator and former leader of the right-wing New Party. The 73-year-old has long been an outspoken supporter of “unification” between Taiwan and China, but given the vast differences between the two sides, he has no intention of pursuing this if elected. mentioned recently.
In 1991, Joe was appointed Minister of the Environment by the Nationalist Party-led government. Two years later, he co-founded a new pro-unification party, but broke away from the Kuomintang because its founders believed the party was not pro-Beijing enough.
Joe retired from politics in 1996 and turned to a career in the media industry. He is best known as the host of a political talk show aired by the pro-mainland broadcaster TVBS. In February 2021, Joe returned to politics.
Wildcard: Ke Wenji, TPP
The eccentric doctor-turned-politician, who once released a quirky rap video while mayor of Taipei urging residents to “do things right,” has become a big issue for voters when it comes to provoking or deferring China. It has decided that it is the third option.
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) leader Ko Wen-ji is popular among young voters and at one point overtook Lai. But as the campaign drags on, he falls behind, and TPOF predicts he will lose with 25% of the vote. His rating has been declining recently.
Once a prominent trauma surgeon, Coe hung up his white coat for politics a decade ago. The 64-year-old shot to political fame in 2014 after supporting the Sunflower Movement, a student-led protest against China’s growing influence on the island.
Later that year, he was elected mayor of Taipei. Despite being a political novice, he gained support from Sunflower Movement activists and the Democratic Progressive Party. Coe’s politics have changed during his eight years as mayor. He expanded Taipei’s ties with mainland China, especially the Shanghai municipal government.
In 2019, he formed the TPP and branded it as an alternative to the Democratic Progressive Party and the Kuomintang. TPP won 5 out of 113 seats in the 2020 election, making it the third largest party in Taiwan’s parliament.
Mr. Ke, known for his acerbic style, has accused the Democratic Progressive Party of endangering Taiwan by “promoting war,” while criticizing the Nationalist Party for “showing too much respect.”
Mr. Coe’s running mate Cynthia Wu He is a current member of Congress and an heir to Shin Kong Group, one of Taiwan’s largest conglomerates. Some believe Wu was chosen because of his wealth.
Born and educated in the United States, the 45-year-old began her career as an investment analyst at Merrill Lynch in London before returning to the family business. She currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Group’s Charity Division.
Analysts said Mr Koh and Mr Wu are both perceived as wealthy members of the elite and could face challenges with a broader electorate that also votes on jobs and the economy. There is.