The China Production Party (CPP) plans to nominate 12 legislative candidates for next year’s legislative elections by next month and pledged to support the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, Chairperson Lu Yuexiang (盧月香) said.
Formerly named the Chinese Production Party, the party founded in 2010 is mainly made up of Chinese spouses of Taiwanese nationals. It has more than 40,000 members.
Last year in Beijing, the CPP defined its founding mission as “promoting a peaceful unification of China and Taiwan.”
In an interview in 2013 with the Guangzhou-based, Chinese-language Southern Weekly, Lu was quoted as saying that it was on the CPP’s agenda to have Taiwanese legislators and military officials perform a kneeling bow at the mausoleum of former Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) in Beijing. She later criticized the report for distorting her words.
Lu, who has lived in Taiwan for 23 years, last year said that before the 2008 presidential election — in which then-KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) ran against Democratic Progressive Party former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) — she not only helped buy airfares for Taiwanese businesspeople in China, but also helped arrange temporary workers to cover their jobs while they were away.
Last year, she was accused of vote-buying for offering Chinese spouses NT$1,000 or a TV stick of equal value to ensure their attendance at an event to campaign for then-KMT Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文).
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office summoned Lu for questioning and later decided not to prosecute her, saying that the money she offered was not for Lien’s election campaign but for a public interest event.
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