The mayoral election for Greater Tainan has been given less attention in the media than the other four municipal races because it is seen as a shoo-in for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Despite Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General King Pu-tsung’s (金溥聰) assessment on Nov. 12 that the party’s Tainan mayoral candidate Kuo Tien-tsai (郭添財) has been gaining momentum in the past few weeks, Kuo is still fighting a tough battle against his DPP counterpart William Lai (賴清德).
Greater Tainan, which will have a combined population of more than 2.7 million following the merger of Tainan City and Tainan County, has long been a DPP stronghold.
Tainan County, which is heavily populated by farmers and fishermen, has been held by the DPP since 1993 and Tainan City since 1997.
Lai’s campaign got off to a shaky start earlier this year after he defeated the five other candidates in the DPP primary — former Tainan County commissioner Mark Chen (陳唐山), legislators Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅) and Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津), Tainan Mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) and Tainan County Commissioner Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智).
After Hsu lost the primary, he was reportedly considering running as an independent, which could have destroyed Lai’s chances of winning the seat.
However, Hsu and Su later both pledged full support for Lai, who promised to continue the policies of the incumbents and develop a new metropolis based on its rich history and potential for innovation.
The KMT’s Kuo, a native of Tainan County, has tried to gain points by claiming that he knows the region better than Lai, who was born in Taipei County. Kuo brought attention to the efforts he had made to close the education and economic gap between Tainan County and northern areas of the country, drawing on his experience as a former educator.
Tainan takes pride in the fact that it was the first settlement established by the Dutch when they colonized Taiwan from 1624 to 1662.
Later, troops led by Ming Dynasty general Koxinga (國姓爺), also known as Zheng Chenggong (鄭成功), landed in Tainan in a successful assault against the Dutch. A large percentage of Tai-nan’s income is generated from tourism that is centered on visits to historical sites around the city.
Tainan County lies in the southern half of the Chianan Plain (嘉南平原), the largest piece of flat land in Taiwan on which rice and other grains are grown. The county’s residents are heavily dependent on agriculture.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching