Since James Soong (宋楚瑜) returned to Taiwan, speculation about possible cooperation between him and Lien Chan (連戰) has arisen again. Especially after the departure of Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) underlings from the KMT's power nucleus, it seems that cooperation between the KMT and PFP (People First Party) is not unlikely as Lee, the major obstacle, is no longer there.
Inter-party cooperation includes campaign and issue-based alliances. The high-profile cooperation between the KMT and PFP, however, is not for promoting issues. Such cooperation occurred frequently when the KMT, DPP and New Party were the major parties.
A more salient part of DPP-PFP cooperation is whether the two can cooperate in decision-making at the Legislative Yuan and put forward common candidates for future mayoral and county commissioner elections.
But before Soong's return, the KMT passed a very harsh article at its Extraordinary National Congress to shut Soong out of elections for the party's Central Committee and chairmanship. What's more, the KMT started membership re-registration immediately after the Extraordinary National Congress to kick out pro-Soong members. Neither new chairman Lien Chan nor the five vice chairpersons have any close relationship with Soong. Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the only potential go-between for the two, ranked just seventh in the election of the Central Standing Committee. Former Kaohsiung Mayor Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) was not even elected. Their defeats have made cooperation between Lien and Soong even more difficult. So far, most of the people willing to bring Lien and Soong together are KMT members, especially the former speaker of the Taiwan provincial assembly Liu Ping-wei (劉炳偉), a close friend of Soong. But these people are not influential enough to act as matchmakers.
One obstacle to the Lien-Soong match is the difficulty in measuring the KMT and PFP's respective political clout. Despite Lien's placement behind Soong in the presidential election, the KMT occupies 19 more seats than the PFP at the Legislative Yuan. Moreover, the PFP is unlikely to gain more than 50 seats in next year's legislative election thereby remaining unable to beat the KMT. Since the KMT can maintain its majority in the Legislature, it hardly needs to subordinate itself to Soong and have its chairman run in the presidential election as his running mate.
More importantly, many KMT cadres think the party does not have to subordinate itself to Soong since it does not need Soong as badly as Soong needs it. The PFP, after all, is a "one-man" party. Should Soong lose the 2004 presidential election and consequently fade from the political scene, the PFP may well be doomed to dissolution. If so, the KMT and the DPP would form a two-party political system.
In the long-term, the KMT might help the DPP win the 2004 presidential election by refusing to cooperate with the PFP. By doing so, it can stop Soong and his underlings from returning to the KMT's power center and prevent the PFP from gaining political clout. By foregoing victory in the 2004 election and minimizing Soong's electoral chances, the KMT will have the DPP as its only competitor in the 2008 presidential election.
KMT-PFP cooperation in the mayoral and commissioner elections will not be easy, either. After all, these positions are elected simultaneously and mayoral and commissioner candidates are required to help candidates for city and county councilors from their own parties. Given the situation, it will be very hard for the KMT and PFP to nominate the same candidates and at the same time in order to avoid competition between their parties. The Kaohsiung mayoral election in 1994 and Taipei mayoral election in 1998 are good examples. Knowing that the odds were against it, the New Party was compelled to nominate its candidates in these two election to promote the electoral chances of its councilor candidates. Whether the KMT and the PFP will avoid repeating the mistake depends on whether they can survive their upcoming trials.
Julian Kuo is an associate professor of political science at Soochow University.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
On May 13, the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment to Article 6 of the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of nuclear reactors from 40 to 60 years, thereby providing a legal basis for the extension or reactivation of nuclear power plants. On May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators used their numerical advantage to pass the TPP caucus’ proposal for a public referendum that would determine whether the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant should resume operations, provided it is deemed safe by the authorities. The Central Election Commission (CEC) has