Hon Hai Precision Industry chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) is considering running in the next presidential election in 2020, following the success of US president-elect and businessman Donald Trump, a weekly magazine said.
The Chinese-language Next Magazine yesterday published a report saying that on Wednesday last week, after Trump started gaining the lead in the US election, Gou gathered his top executives to discuss strategies should Trump win the presidential race.
Gou reportedly surprised his executives by asking: “Regarding running for the presidency in 2020, what do you think?”
The report said that at first, the executives thought he was asking about matters regarding the 2020 presidential election, but later realized that Gou wanted to go a step further following Trump’s victory.
The report cited high-ranking Hon Hai sources as saying that Gou is not satisfied with government efficiency and policies and has presented several proposals, including a tax on wealthy people.
“However, [the proposals] have not been taken seriously... Gou feels anxious and angry. He is anxious about Taiwan’s competitiveness and angry at the government for being snail-paced, muddleheaded and incompetent,” the sources were quoted as saying.
The report triggered mixed responses from netizens.
Some said the chairman of Hon Hai, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, is their candidate of choice, while others opposed the idea.
Hon Hai has not commented on the report.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
Taiwanese celebrities Hank Chen (陳漢典) and Lulu Huang (黃路梓茵) announced yesterday that they are planning to marry. Huang announced and posted photos of their engagement to her social media pages yesterday morning, joking that the pair were not just doing marketing for a new show, but “really getting married.” “We’ve decided to spend all of our future happy and hilarious moments together,” she wrote. The announcement, which was later confirmed by the talent agency they share, appeared to come as a surprise even to those around them, with veteran TV host Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) saying he was “totally taken aback” by the news. Huang,
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult