James Soong (宋楚瑜) stunned political circles when he chose Chang Chao-hsiung (張昭雄), President of Chang Gung University (長庚大學), as his running mate. More surprising is the fact that Chang has close links with both the KMT and DPP. He is good friends with both Premier Siew and DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian, and has been a generous patron of the DPP for some time. The Chang Gung Community (including the university, hospital and surrounding residential communities, all run by the Formosa Group) is also well-known for its enthusiastic support of the DPP ticket. Yet for all of this, Chang chose to run with James Soong. What's the deal?
Soong's choice of Chang is not that surprising. For Soong, Chang has three advantages. First, Chang will help Soong to dodge the issue of ethnicirty. With a strong native Taiwanese identity and close connections with opposition groups, Chang will deflect some voters' unease about Soong's mainland Chinese background. Next, Chang's involvement in the Formosa Plastics empire will help Soong to curry favor with its chairman, Wang Yung-ching (王永慶), and tap into local business support. Last, Chang will bolster Soong's image as being above party politics and distance Soong from internal KMT squabbles.
In short, Chang is just what Soong needs to fend off both KMT and DPP attacks.
Soong is conscious of Chang's importance, shown when he put Chang in charge of drawing up a China policy soon after he was announced as Soong's running mate, silencing attacks from the other parties. Some have attacked Chang for "betraying the opposition party," but Chang replied: "The only betrayal possible is a betrayal of the people," adding to Soong's appeal to voters dissatisfied with the ruling party.
Unlike KMT and DPP vice-presidential candidates Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) and Anette Lu (呂秀蓮), Chang is without political experience, but this just makes it more difficult for opponents to target his weak spots. Chang's connections with the opposition, his clean image and his background with Formosa Plastics (台塑) make Chang someone who could add a lot to Soong's campaign. But this depends on the interaction between Soong and Chang.
Chang's opposition party connections will also help Soong to tone down his own KMT dominated past, but this may not last. Soong's camp is dominated by former KMT members who were with him when he was Provincial Governor. Even if Wu Po-hsiung (吳伯雄), current senior advisor to the president, Wu Tun-yi (吳敦義), previous mayor of Kaohsiung, and former Minister of Justice Liao Cheng-hao (廖正豪) announce their support for Soong, his power base will remain firmly in the non-mainstream faction of the KMT. Only the addition of influential non-KMT members will change this.
Overall, Soong's selection of Chang is favorable for Soong in the short-term, and may work to Soong's advantage in the long-term if the two are able to cooperate well. His entry into the race seems to have cast a pall over both the KMT and DPP camps. If Chang can help prevent the specter of ethnicirty from being raised in the election, and reduce some of the mud-slinging, then whatever the results, it will be a victory for democracy in Taiwan.
Julian Kuo is assistant professor of Political Science at Soochow University.
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
The two major opposition parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), jointly announced on Tuesday last week that former TPP lawmaker Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) would be their joint candidate for Chiayi mayor, following polling conducted earlier this month. It is the first case of blue-white (KMT-TPP) cooperation in selecting a joint candidate under an agreement signed by their chairpersons last month. KMT and TPP supporters have blamed their 2024 presidential election loss on failing to decide on a joint candidate, which ended in a dramatic breakdown with participants pointing fingers, calling polls unfair, sobbing and walking
In the opening remarks of her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) framed her visit as a historic occasion. In his own remarks, Xi had also emphasized the history of the relationship between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Where they differed was that Cheng’s account, while flawed by its omissions, at least partially corresponded to reality. The meeting was certainly historic, albeit not in the way that Cheng and Xi were signaling, and not from the perspective
RSS